For if there is any single thing that everyone hopes for most dearly, it must be this: that the youngest outlive the oldest.

From my earliest memory, times of crisis seemed to end up with women in the kitchen preparing food for men.

A choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. I am the forest's conscience, but remember, the forest eats itself and lives forever.

When the scope of the problem seems insuperable, isn't it time to call this one, give it up, and get on with life as we know it. I do know that answer to that one: that's called child abuse. When my teenager worries that her generation won't be able to fix this problem, I have to admit to her that it won't be up to her generation. It's up to mine. This is a now-or-never kind of project.

Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.

Food culture in the United States has long been cast as the property of a privileged class. It is nothing of the kind. Culture is the property of a species.

I had decided early on that if I couldn’t dress elegant, I’d dress memorable.