I was kind of an innocent hayseed from a middle-class, utterly nonintellectual background.

My father was in charge of managing the farm.

Drama is very important in life: You have to come on with a bang. You never want to go out with a whimper. Everything can have drama if it's done right. Even a pancake.

The dinner hour is a sacred, happy time when everyone should be together and relaxed.

I was thirty-seven years old and still discovering who I was.

People were hysterical about Communism the way people today are hysterical about flag burning. I'm really against these people who try to show that they're great patriots, because they're not thinking, they're just being hysterical.

A cookbook is only as good as its poorest recipe.