“Finally, cooking is good citizenship. It’s the only way to get serious about putting locally raised foods into your diet, which keeps farmlands healthy and grocery money in the neighborhood.”

Pain reaches the heart with electrical speed, but truth moves to the heart as slowly as a glacier.

Thanks for this day, for all birds safe in their nests, for whatever this is, for life.

Because I could not stop for death he kindly stopped for me, or paused at least to strike a glancing blow with his sky-blue mouth as he passed.

There are days when I am envious of my hens: when I hunger for a purpose as perfect and sure as a single daily egg.

We agreed with him in principal – we were little scientists, born and bred. But children robbed of love will dwell on magic.

Forgive me, O Heavenly Father, according to the multitude of Thy mercies. I have lusted in my heart to break a man’s skull and scatter the stench of his brains across several people’s back yards.

We’re animals. We’re born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts.

I never think that anything I’m writing is bluntly political in any way. I’m not going for commentary.

Tall and straight I may appear, but I will always be Ada inside. A crooked little person trying to tell the truth. The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes

Friends, there is nothing like your own family to make you appreciate strangers!

Libraries are the one American institution you shouldn’t rip off.

Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history.

What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness.

… Urban friends ask me how I can stand living here, ‘so far from everything?’ When I hear this question over the phone, I’m usually looking out the window at a forest, a running creek, and a vegetable garden, thinking: Define everything.

People ask without wanting to know.

Your dreams, what you hope for and all that, it’s not separate from your life. It grows right up out of it.

With the increasing price levels, the farmers are benefiting. Dal, atta, vegetables have all become expensive. I am happy with this price rise. The more the prices rise the better it is for farmers

Even feigning surprise, pretending it was unexpected and saying a ritual thanks, is surely wiser than just expecting everything so carelessly.

Even where the land was more receptive, settlers soon learned to take some precautions before planting their vegetables.

Once you start cooking, one thing leads to another. A new recipe is as exciting as a blind date. A new ingredient, heaven help me, is an intoxicating affair.

The cabbage surpasses all other vegetables. If, at a banquet, you wish to dine a lot and enjoy your dinner, then eat as much cabbage as you wish, seasoned with vinegar, before dinner, and likewise after dinner eat some half-dozen leaves.

Households that have lost the soul of cooking from their routines may not know what they are missing: the song of a stir-fry sizzle, the small talk of clinking measuring spoons, the yeasty scent of rising dough, the painting of flavors onto a pizza before it slides into the oven.

Cooking is 80 percent confidence, a skill best acquired starting from when the apron strings wrap around you twice.

I definitely gravitate towards things like vegetables, chicken, brown rice, but I don’t deprive myself of anything. If I want a Sprinkles cupcake, I’m having a Sprinkles cupcake. But I’m not going to have one every day… you just have to have a sensible outlook on all of it.