Food is the rare moral arena in which the ethical choice is generally the one more likely to make you groan with pleasure.

I concentrate on character, theme, language, structure, voice. It actually surprises me that no matter what I write, people declare it "intently political." I'm just writing about the world I know, as it is. Wounds and griefs included.

But nothing on this earth is guaranteed, when you get right down to it, you know ? I've been thinking about that. About how your kids aren't really YOURS, they're just these people that you try to keep an eye on, and hope you'll all grow up someday to like each other and still be in one piece. What I mean is, everything you get is really just on loan. Does that make sense?" Sure,"I said. "Like library books. Sooner or later they've all got to go back into the nightdrop.

It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.

A human being can be good or bad or right or wrong, maybe. But how can you say a person is illegal? You just can't. That's all there is to it.

There's always more to a story than a body can see from the fenceline.

I'm not pretending to be ingenuous; I know what I'm doing.