A meal can be thought of as a ritual and a work of art, with limits laid down, desires aroused and fulfilled, enticements, variety, patterning and pl…

- Margaret Visser

We use eating as a medium for social relationships: satisfaction of the most individual of needs becomes a means of creating community.

- Margaret Visser

Eating is aggressive by nature, and the implements required for it could quickly become weapons; table manners are, most basically, a system of taboo…

- Margaret Visser

Salt is the only rock directly consumed by man. It corrodes but preserves, desiccates but is wrested from the water. It has fascinated man for thousa…

- Margaret Visser

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

- Margaret Visser

This is what is meant by "sacrifice", literally, the "making sacred" of an animal consumed for dinner. Yet sacrfice, because it dwells on the death, …

- Margaret Visser

food is never just something to eat.

- Margaret Visser

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 cook…

- Margaret Visser

Our perception that we have 'no time' is one of the distinctive marks of modern Western culture.

- Margaret Visser