The extent to which we take everyday objects for granted is the precise extent to which they govern and inform our lives.

Food-what is chosen from the possibilities available, how it is presented, how it is eaten, with whom and when, and how much time is allotted to cooking and eating it-is one of the means by which a society creates itself and acts out its aims and fantasies.

Salt is the only rock directly consumed by man. It corrodes but preserves, desiccates but is wrested from the water. ... It preserves things from corruption - even as it corrodes other things with its bite. A little of it fertilizes the land a lot sterilizes it.

Salt represents the civilized: it requires know-how to get it, and a sophisticated combination of cooking and spoilt, jaded appetites to need it.

It is the nature of human beings not to be able to leave nature alone.