Food is not rational. Food is culture, habit, craving and identity.

Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness?

There is no greater gift than time.

The question, I've come to think, is not what inspires one to change, but what inspires one to remain changed.

There is a glaring reason that the necessary total ban on nontherapeutic use of antibiotics hasn't happened: The factory farm industry, allied with the pharmaceutical industry, has more power than public-health professionals.

It seems entirely possible to me that horrible things can be going on without us becoming horrible people.

There are two kinds of sculptures. There's the kind that subtracts: Michelangelo starts with a block of marble and chips away. And then there is the kind that adds, building with clay, piling it on. The way I write novels is to keep piling on and piling on and piling on.

I have made my own choice, which is vegetarianism, but it's not the choice I'm imposing on anybody else.

I'm less worried about accomplishment - as younger people always can't help but be - and more concerned with spending my time well, spending time with my family, and reading, learning things.