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

you can't really know the person standing before you, because always there is some missing piece

If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life.

Friends, there is nothing like your own family to make you appreciate strangers!

The bad thing about small-town life is that everybody knows your business...I suppose that is my central obsession. What we owe to society, what we owe to ourselves.

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.

Something in me was always watching life from the outside, permanently obsessed with the notion of belonging vs. not-belonging [to a group]. It did not make for a happy childhood, but it was excellent training for a writer.