What has impressed me the most about the Italians whose tables we've sat at is that they are traditional cooks but also outrageously innovative. These people are wild improvisers.

Anytime the perfume of orange and lemon groves wafts in the window; the human body has to feel suffused with a languorous well-being.

Never lose your childish enthusiasm and things will come your way.

Sometimes the valley below is like a bowl filled up with fog. I can see hard green figs on two trees and pears on a tree just below me. A fine crop coming in. May summer last a hundred years.

When I was twelve, I started reading Eudora Welty, Thomas Wolfe, Flannery O'Connor, James Agee, and - do we dare breathe the name - William Faulkner.

Where is it written that houses must be beige? Any dun colored house would look better if painted pineapple, cream, ochre, or even a smart sage.

The world cracks open for those willing to take a risk.