Dinner alone is one of life's pleasures.

No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.

A world without tomatoes is like a string quartet without violins.

When I was alone, I lived on eggplant, the stove top cook's strongest ally.

People who like to cook like to talk about food....without one cook giving another cook a tip or two, human life might have died out a long time ago.

Lentils are friendly - the Miss Congeniality of the bean world.

And, for an unsurpassed double whammy, there is talking about eating while you are eating with friends.

The table is a meeting place, a gathering ground, the source of sustenance and nourishment, festivity, safety, and satisfaction. A person cooking is a person giving: Even the simplest food is a gift.

Friendship is not possible between two women one of whom is very well dressed.

A person cooking is a person giving. Even the simplest food is a gift.

We need time to defuse, to contemplate. Just as in sleep our brains relax and give us dreams, so at some time in the day we need to disconnect, reconnect, and look around us.

Bootlicking is only a way to get published, not to become a writer

I would still describe China as a vast, invigorating puzzle that will never make sense to my western upbringing.

Atlanta is an incredibly cool city.

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

I wasn't really serious about acting - I was serious about baseball

You cannot expect miracles to happen overnight, be patient, be loving and little by little the change you seek will come.

I don't stream or buy CDs pretty much everything I buy, I do it on iTunes.

The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous.

If you don't decide what your life is about, it defaults to what you spend your days doing.

Baseball is all I ever wanted. I could eat, sleep, and dream baseball.