What was so moving for [Diane Wilson], and also for me, is that she felt the Bay itself was like her grandmother. She said, "I don't think there's a woman alive who would give up fighting for her child, or her mother, or her grandmother."

My children threw me a life line: "Return to your roots - food - and rewrite your first book, Diet for a Small Planet." I learned that if I could just show up, in this case, if I could just get myself out of bed, get to the computer in my tiny office at MIT, and start writing, help would start arriving.

I think that fear of embarrassment is the essence of the human challenge.

I think that luxury has nothing to do with money, and everything to do with beauty.

Despite a tenfold increase in the use of pesticides between 1947 and 1974 (in the US), crop losses due to pests have...remained at an estimated 33%. Losses due to insects alone have nearly doubled, ...from 7% in the 1942-1951 period to about 13% in 1974.

Even the fear of death is nothing compared to the fear of not having lived authentically and fully.

[O]ur greatest contributions to the cause of freedom and development overseas is not what we do over there, but what we do right here at home.