The books we need are of the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that makes us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, lost in a forest remote from all human habitation.

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This brings me back to the image of Kafka standing before a fish in the Berlin aquarium, a fish on which his gaze fell in a newly found peace after he decided not to eat animals. Kafka recognized that fish as a member of his invisible family- not as his equal, of course, but as another being that was his concern.

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Self restraint in speech, food, entertainment and vanity are the most essential fundamental of spiritual growth.

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The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what’s that? The freedom to starve? — Angela Davis

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I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.

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I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food. ― W.C. Fields

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No writer in our time has been more isolated than Kafka, and yet few have achieved communication as well as he did.

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I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more

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We are indeed much more than what we eat, but what we eat can nevertheless help us to be much more than what we are.

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Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.

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