The good life is not about avoiding fear. Just the opposite.

I was a compulsive eater in my late teens and until I wrote Diet for a Small Planet, so I know what it feels like when food becomes a threat.

No society has fulfilled its democratic promise if people go hungry... If some go without food they have surely been deprived of all power. The existence of hunger belies the existence of democracy.

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.

The real cause of hunger is the powerlessness of the poor to gain access to the resources they need to feed themselves.

[Fear] means that we are human beings walking into the unknown, and that we are risking breaking with others for something we believe in.

That's what happened when my own life crumbled. The people who came into my life bolstered me to take more risks, to be even more true to myself.