Finally, cooking is good citizenship. It's the only way to get serious about putting locally raised foods into your diet, which keeps farmlands healthy and grocery money in the neighborhood.

No reporter worth his buttons will let the facts intrude on a good story.

Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up.

Being a novelist and being a mother have exactly coincided in my life: the call from my agent saying that I had a contract for my first novel - that was on my answering phone message when I got back from the hospital with my first child.

There is something in us that loves certain disasters and the fever of this moment and surrendering to that.

It's what you do that makes your soul.

I know I'm a rare person, a trained scientist who writes fiction, because so few contemporary novelists engage with science.