I am not a chef. I am not even a trained or professional cook. My qualification is as an eater.

You could probably get through life without knowing how to roast a chicken, but the question is, would you want to?

I was a quiet teenager, introverted, full of angst.

You cannot truly say you live well unless you eat well.

Sometimes...we don't want to feel like a postmodern, postfeminist, overstretched woman but, rather, a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeggy fumes of baking pie in our languorous wake.

Sometimes it's good just to be seduced by the particular cheeses spread out in front of you on a cheese counter.

I am always surprised when people read double entendres into my innocuous babble.

I don't believe in low-fat cooking.

I don't believe you can ever really cook unless you love eating.

I never taste the wine first in restaurants, I just ask the waiter to pour.

Cooking is actually quite aggressive and controlling and sometimes, yes, there is an element of force-feeding going on.

Every evening, I died, and every evening, I was born.

A family is a group of people who keep confusing you with someone you were as a kid.

You ever try holding, say, even a single chapter of a novel in your head? Consciously? All at once?

I could not tread these perilous paths in safety, if I did not keep a saving sense of humor.

Grandma said [...] when you come on something that is good, first thing to do is share it with whoever you can find; that way, the good spreads out to where no telling it will go.

It's hard to find a way forward. When you're 18 it happens in huge chunks every day, but after 20 years, growth is much more costly.

The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves.

I thought, maybe the difference between white folks and colored is just this matter of reading and writing. I made up my mind I would know my letters.

There is a loneliness more precious than life. There is a freedom more precious than the world. Infinitely more precious than life and the world is that moment when one is alone with God.

The spirit he has shown has been second to none. (on Terry Fenwick's drunk-driving charge)