Knowing and understanding the people we love most is a process that continues well beyond their deaths... and is never complete.

Most inexperienced cooks believe, mistakenly, that a fine cake is less challenging to produce than a fine souffle or mousse. I know, however, that a good cake is like a good marriage: from the outside, it looks ordinary, sometimes unremarkable, yet cut into it, taste it, and you know that it is nothing of the sort. It is the sublime result oflong and patient experience, a confection whose success relies on a profound understanding of compatibilities and tastes; on a respect for measurement, balance, chemistry and heat; on a history of countless errors overcome.

Nothing teaches great writing like the very best books do. Yet, good teachers often help students cross that bridge, and I have to say that I had a few extraordinary English teachers in high school whom I still credit for their guidance.

It's odd to spend your vacation with someone else's music especially when you're alone. You're free to let loose, unobserved, but someone else has chosen the words you belt out in private, the rythms you can dance to like a fool.

Knowing and understanding the people we love most is a process that continues well beyond their deaths... and is never complete.

I see life as increasingly complex, vivid, colorful, crazy, chaotic. That's the world I write about...the world I live in.

I'd rather be pleasantly surprised than fatally disappointed.