This is the power of gathering: it inspires us, delightfully, to be more hopeful, more joyful, more thoughtful: in a word, more alive.

We're, as Carlos Petrini says, we're on a train and it's going off the edge of the cliff. We have to stop the track and get off. Now we're in a jungle. We don't know how we're going to get out but we'll find a way. I've always believed in people power. I saw it happen when we organized around the AIDS crisis... We made an AIDS quilt that covered the entire mall. Everybody had a part in it and we can do this.

It's a pleasure to talk to the farmers. That's my favorite part, always was. It's really the communication and exchange that builds communities. It's not something you can legislate. It's that you're giving me the best bread I ever had and I'm so happy to give you money for it. I can't think of anything I'd rather do than stand in line and give money for your bread.

Our full humanity is contingent on our hospitality; we can be complete only when we are giving something away; when we sit at the table and pass the peas to the person next to us we see that person in a whole new way.

I believe that every child in this world needs to have a relationship with the land...to know how to nourish themselves...and to know how to connect with the community around them.

I feel it is an obligation to help people understand the relation of food to agriculture and the relationship of food to culture.

When you have the best and tastiest ingredients, you can cook very simply and the food will be extraordinary because it tastes like what it is.