Over the years, I learned so much from mom. She taught me about the importance of home and history and family and tradition. She also taught me that aging need not mean narrowing the scope of your activities and interests or a diminution of the great pleasures to be had in the everyday.

My dream... was to be an eclectic knowledge-gathering person.

I support Alice Waters in her desire that there be a vegetable garden at the White House. I don't think they should rip up the Rose Garden, because that's something that I love. They should probably dig up another patch and grow some vegetables there.

I haven't been to Tasmania. I haven't been to the South Pole, and I haven't been to the North Pole. I want to see the polar bear migration before there are no polar bears. I want to see Glacier National Park before the glacier melts.

I live in the same house I’ve lived in for 25 years. I haven’t gone off and bought mansions, you know, even though my subject is living… living in a mansion wouldn’t do for my readers. I have to keep my credibility alive with my readers, so we’re in the same place. I just make that place nicer and nicer. And… and that’s a secret. And people don’t know that. People think, oh, she lives in this fabulous place, it’s the same old place. It started out like a farm, it got to be a farmette, then it got to be an estatelet. I built a wall, it helped a lot. But it’s the same place, the same grounded nature.

I love Champagne and I love to drink it out of any kind of beautiful glass.

I live in an old house with no closets and no built-ins. I hate big cupboards.