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" M. F. K. Fisher was a wonder and a huge influence, and someone I got to know pretty well at the end of her life. "

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" What I like best is the challenge of learning something I didn't know how to do, going beyond my comfort level. "

" I love to make pies - pot pies, quiches, savory tarts, fruit pies. I use an old-fashioned pastry blender with wires and a wooden handle. I never use a recipe. "

" You look at the Barefoot Contessa or Lydia Bastianich, and it's just like watching your mother cooking. "

" I wanted to figure out a way of living where I didn't have to be in an office every day. "

" One of the things I really love about restaurants is that in many ways, they are the ultimate democratic institutions, where you get to walk in the door, plunk down your money, and for however long that you're there, you can be anyone you want to be. "

" I think it's hard, when you're someone who likes to please people, as I am, to be a boss. I had to learn how to rein myself in and not terrify people. "

" When you're a restaurant critic, you're not home at night, so breakfast became really important for us. "

" It takes a great deal of strength to be an optimist. "

" Writing about food is my default. "

" I don't have my own garden; we're on shale and in the woods. And if I did have a garden, the deer and chipmunks and squirrels and bears would eat everything anyway. "

" What I learned is that how we present ourselves to the world is really how we get treated. So if you want to be treated really well in a restaurant, you really have to dress up. You cannot just show up. "

" I loved writing fiction. I mean, once I found the character, or the characters, and knew who they were and knew their back-stories, it really - I mean, I went into my studio every day, thinking, 'What's gonna happen to Billy today?' "

" I think I wrote my first piece about food in 1978. "

" One of mom's greatest acts of generosity was that she trained me to be defiant. Her great gift to me was encouraging me to be the person that I wanted to be, not the one that she and my father wished I was. "

" The American government policy on what we supported and subsidised in agriculture was a social experiment on a whole generation of children. "

" My mother started out by being a very good girl. She did everything that was expected of her, and it cost her dearly. Late in her life, she was furious that she had not followed her own heart; she thought that it had ruined her life, and I think she was right. "

" We in the media have been guilty about not doing a better job of making people understand how really simple cooking is. We've made everyone feel like they have to be a chef. "

" Reading an audio book is a very odd experience because there are three people sitting out there while you're reading in this glass booth, and you can see their reactions. "

" If you're going to tell stuff, you might as well tell the real stuff. "

" There is an almost anti-epicurean tradition at the very base of America. For much of the middle part of American history, people who wanted to overcome that went to France. "

" I don't think there's one thing more important you can do for your kids than have family dinner. "

" Anyone who has ever been an ugly adolescent - and we are legion - knows that the feeling of being unlovely and unlovable never goes away; it is always there, lurking just beneath the surface. "

" I've been to a couple of restaurants in L.A. that were so loud, I left there with a sore throat; you literally could not have a conversation. I think it's very deliberate: There's this idea that somehow it's more fun if there's a roar in the room. "

" There is that romanticized idea of what a bookstore can be, what a library can be, what a shop can be. And to me, they are that. These are places that open doors into other worlds if only you're open to them. "

" I came from a family where, you know, we sat down at the table every night, and you better have a story to tell. My father never wrote his stories down. And you know, I learned that they went farther if you wrote them down. "

" If you go back in American history, oysters were the food of poor people. New York was filled with oyster saloons in the 1800s. "

" My mother's name was Miriam, but most people called her Mim. "

" My kitchen was built for my body. It forms a 'U' in the middle of the living room and dining room. It's not huge, because I don't like huge kitchens. "

" We in America have gotten addicted to cheap food. The result of that is antibiotic-laden fish, foods that are bred to be portable. "

" The implications of Americans devoting their lives to fast food are more profound than the fact that our kids aren't eating well. There are real repercussions that we need to know about and think about. "