Literature is one of the few kinds of writing in the world that does not tell you what to buy, want, see, be, or believe. It’s more like conversation, raising new questions and moving you to answer them for yourself.
You never knew which split second might be the zigzag bolt dividing all that went before from the everything that comes next.
A sound-bite culture can’t discuss science very well. Exactly what we’re losing when we reduce biodiversity, the causes and consequences of global warming-these traumas can’t be adequately summarized in an evening news wrap-up.
I could never work out whether we were to view religion as a life-insurance policy or a life sentence.
Once you start cooking, one thing leads to another. A new recipe is as exciting as a blind date. A new ingredient, heaven help me, is an intoxicating affair.
There’s always more to a story than a body can see from the fenceline.
Corn syrup and added fats have been outed as major ingredients in fast food, but they hide out in packaged foods too, even presumed-innocent ones like crackers.
I’ve never gotten over high school, to the extent that I’m still a little surprised that my friends want to hang out with me.
Food culture in the United States has long been cast as the property of a privileged class. It is nothing of the kind. Culture is the property of a species.
This will be Great Mam’s last spring. Her last June apples. Her last fresh roasting ears from the garden.
Life proceeds, it enrages. The untouched ones spend their luck without a thought, believing they deserve it.
What keeps me awake at the wheel is the thrill of trying something completely new with each book. I’m not a risk-taker in life, generally speaking, but as a writer I definitely choose the fast car, the impossible rock face, the free fall.
My way of finding a place in this world is to write one.
Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.
We agreed with him in principal – we were little scientists, born and bred. But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.
What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.
Our plans are small and somewhat absurd.
Pure and unblemished souls must taste very bland, with an aftertaste of bitterness.
Downstream is always someone else’s up.
My worst nightmare is being stuck somewhere with nothing to read.