“It is more than twenty years since we left the city. This is a serious chunk of time, longer than the years we spent living there. Yet we still think of Jerusalem as our home. Not home in the sense...”

“For those, like me, who can't rely on being given a home smoker this Christmas, you can build your own approximation with just a roll of tin foil and a big wok or pan for which you have a lid.”

“Tiny quails may not seem as impressive as a mammoth turkey, but there is something refreshing about a spread of individual birds on the Christmas table.”

“Apart from its famous healing properties, manuka has a strong, woody flavour.”

“I have a terrible tendency to lick my fingers when I cook. So much so that I got a telling off from my pastry teacher years ago, who said it would hinder my prospects.”

“Braising eggs in a flavoursome, aromatic sauce is all the rage. It is warming and comforting, ideal for the morning when you are not normally up for a great culinary challenge.”

“With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.”

“The cake had a trick candle that wouldn't go out, so I didn't get my wish. Which was just that it would always be like this, that my life could be a party just for me.”

“Romance novels are birthday cake and life is often peanut butter and jelly. I think everyone should have lots of delicious romance novels lying around for those times when the peanut butter of life...”

“In a universe where all life is in movement, where ever fact seen in perspective is totally engaging, we impose stillness on lively young bodies, distort reality to dullness, make action drudgery. ...”

“If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter. ”

“When you're a kid all you know is that your dad puts on his suit or overalls and vanishes from your life until nightfall. Sometimes my pops came back exhausted and scarlet-eyed, as if he'd been eng...”

“I am the perfect version of me.”

“But if you tame me, then weshall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, Ishall be unique in all the world.”

“I don't want the world to keep turning without me on it.”