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Appetite One of the major pleasures in life is appetite, and one of our major duties should be to preserve it. Appetite is the keenness of living: it is one of the senses that tells you that you are still curious to exist, that you still have an edge on your longings and want to bite into the world and taste its numerous flavors and juices. By appetite, of course, I dont mean just the desire for food, but any condition of unsatisfied desire, any burning in the blood that proves you want more than youve got, and that you havent used up your life. Wilde said he felt sorry for those who never got their hearts desire, but sorrier still for those who did. For appetite, for me, is this state of wanting, which keeps ones expectations alive. I remember learning this lesson long ago as a child, when treats and indulgence were few, and when I discovered that the greatest pitch happiness was not in actually eating a toffee but in gazing at it beforehand. True, the first bite was delicious, but once the toffee was gone one was left with nothing, neither toffee nor lust. Besides, the whole toffeeness of toffees was imperceptibly diminished by the gross act of having eating it. No, the best was in wanting it, in sitting and looking at it, when one tasted an endless treasure house of flavors. So, for me, one of the keenest pleasures of appetite remains in the wanting, not the satisfaction. In wanting a peach, or a whisky, or a particular texture or sound, or to be with a particular friend, for in those condition, of course, I know that the object of desire is always at its most flawlessly perfect. For that matter, I dont want three square meals a dayI want one huge, delicious, orgiastic, table groaning blow out, say every four days, and then not be too sure where the next one is coming from①. A day of fasting is not for me just a device for denying oneself a pleasure, but rather a way of anticipating a rarer moment of supreme enjoyment. | 
