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.

Humans need to feel effective - to feel that we can "make a dent," as he puts it. So the art of living is to find expressions appropriate to our own uniqueness in which we can experience effectiveness.

I had no identity [when I was 27] - I was terrified that somebody would ask me what I was doing, and I would have no answer.

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

If we cannot know what's possible, then we are free to do that which is pulling our hearts and that which is life serving.

Hunger is a people-made phenomenon, so the central issue is power: the power of those who make the decisions about what is grown and who, or what, it's grown for.

If we start with "limits" and a premise of scarcity and fear, it makes us fearful of each other, and that makes us vulnerable to anti-democratic systems.