The great pleasure that comes from reading poets such as Mark Doty and Marianne Moore is the realisation that the essential virtues - compassion, wonder, humility, respect for the mysterious - are far from conventionally heroic.

I love food and I love ingredients and I love reading recipes. It's just a great pleasure.

Learning to decipher words had only added to the pleasures of holding spines and turning pages, measuring the journey to the end with a thumb-riffle, poring over frontispieces. Books! Opening with a crackle of old glue, releasing perfume; closing with a solid thump.

I know my corn plants intimately, and I find it a great pleasure to know them.

Music is another great pleasure of life. I like all sorts.

There are a lot of people with a lot of money, and I'm amazed they don't understand what a great pleasure it can be to give.