“The lives of the Outer Dwellers had become almost normal again. Bitterness was their bread and rivalry their wine.”

“Without Ceres (bread) and Bacchus (wine) Venus (love) freezes.”
Sine Cerere et Baccho friget Venus

“I have eaten your bread and salt.
I have drunk your water and wine.
The deaths ye died I have watched beside
And the lives ye led were mine.”

“Have I not found a happy earth?
I least should breathe a thought of pain.
Would God renew me from my birth
I'd almost live my life again.
So sweet it seems with thee to walk,
And once again to woo thee mine —
It seems in after-dinner talk
Across the walnuts and the wine”

“If he had to bring all the bitterness and hatred of the world into his heart, he was not going to be in love with her again.”

“"The bread of the stranger is bitter," says Dante, "and his staircase hard to climb." But who can know what the bitterness of dependence is so well as the poor companion of an old lady of quality?”

“If we are to cherish freedom, and to guard it, we must remember what the alternative is: the bread of affliction and the bitter herbs of slavery.”

“You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.”

“What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and out comes sighs, laughter, and dreams.”

“And our problems will crumble apart, the soul / blow through like a wind, and here where we live
will all be clean again, with fresh bread on the table.”