Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
I am always impressed by a well-written menu, one that is informative and appetizing without slipping into pretentious nonsense. Here, for example, is a London restaurant’s attempt to justify the exorbitant price of its whitebait: “The tiny fresh fish are tossed by our chef for a few fleeting seconds into a bath of boiling oil, and then removed bef
... See morePeter Mayle • Encore Provence: New Adventures in the South of France (Vintage Departures)
For Paris is, according to its legend, the city where everyone loses his head, and his morals, lives through at least one histoire d’amour, ceases, quite, to arrive anywhere on time, and thumbs his nose at the Puritans—the city, in brief, where all become drunken on the fine old air of freedom. This legend, in the fashion of legends, has this much
... See moreJames Baldwin • Notes of a Native Son
The Sweet Life in Paris:: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City
amazon.com
Living in the southern part of France, where there is more sun than water, it is rare to meet a frog on a menu. He thrives in the damp, mates in his pond, spends his moist life in a temperate climate. The chances of finding him in a Provençal kitchen are remote. So when I decided to test the truth of the old chestnut—“Actually, it tastes like chick
... See morePeter Mayle • French Lessons: Adventures with Knife, Fork, and Corkscrew (Vintage Departures)
of outlandish facts and quotes—he is a tenacious reporter—and a style that barely suppresses his own amusement. It works particularly well on the buccaneers who continue to try the patience of the citizenry, as proved by his profile in The New Yorker of the developer Donald Trump. Noting that Trump “had aspired to and achieved the ultimate luxury,
... See moreWilliam Zinsser • On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction
What are the rights of man, if they do not include the normal right to regulate his own health, in relation to the normal risks of diet and daily life? Nobody can pretend that beer is a poison as prussic acid is a poison; that all the millions of civilised men who drank it all fell down dead when they had touched it. Its use and abuse is obviously
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