I realize that at a certain point if we're going to change our food system, it's going to be the next generation that's going to be critical. This generation is very interested in food issues, very concerned about things like animal welfare and the impact of the food system on the environment.

People say they don't have time to cook, yet in the last few years we have found an extra two hours a day for the internet.

A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule.

A vegan in a Hummer has a lighter carbon footprint than a beef eater in a Prius.

Fairness forces you - even when you're writing a piece highly critical of, say, genetically modified food, as I have done - to make sure you represent the other side as extensively and as accurately as you possibly can.

Experiences that banish irony are much better for living than for writing.

If you're a politician it's very useful to say that we can have economic growth and at the same time green the economy, but writers just have to face up to the fact that there are some fundamental tensions between the economic order and the biological order.