“There is one field in which I think I have achieved the right balance of sensibility and indifference, and that is in gastronomy. I like very good food and will choose it in preference to bad, but at the same time I am fundamentally indifferent to it. Good food gives me pleasure, sometimes great pleasure, but not the kind of pleasure that I would find it hard to live without. If someone were to tell me that, for the rest of my life, I would have to live on stale cheese sandwiches, I should be a little sad, but I would soon make peace with the world. But if someone were to tell that, for the rest of my life, I could listen only to rock music and read only airport novels, I should pray for a swift death.”
Theodore Dalrymple, Warmth Is Cool (New English Review, December 2014)