It is not 2006 all over the world. So who are you in a place where 1950 or 1920 is about to arrive?

Life offers you a thousand chances... all you have to do is take one.

There is no technique, there is just the way to do it. Now, are we going to measure or are we going to cook?

It’s daunting to find the language so foreign, so distant, but also so thrilling. One is absolved of responsibility when the language is incomprehensible.

Five tender apricots in a blue bowl, a brief and exact promise of things to come.

A Chinese poet many centuries ago noticed that to re-create something in words is like being alive twice.

I had the urge to examine my life in another culture and move beyond what I knew.

Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere; I would be different.

If you've got a plot the size of a car or a tiny yard in Italy, you're going to be growing tomatoes and basil and celery and carrots, and everybody is still connected to the land.

Where is it written that houses must be beige? Any dun colored house would look better if painted pineapple, cream, ochre, or even a smart sage.

Sometimes the valley below is like a bowl filled up with fog. I can see hard green figs on two trees and pears on a tree just below me. A fine crop coming in. May summer last a hundred years.

Sometimes you just have to find something to keep your body grounded, your mind flexible, and your heart open.

Life without knowing your destiny leads to “rat races”, depression and frustration, and attempt to commit suicide

I don't remember ever signing up for weird. It just sort of happened.

Old Care has a mortgage on every estate And that's what you pay for the wealth that you get.

Optimism is the last resort of those in deep despair. There can't be any optimists in heaven.

When I was little, I would always lie about the stupidest things. In kindergarten or first grade, I would tell people I had tigers living in my attic and a room full of gold.

Architect: Someone who knows the difference between that which could be done and that which should be done.

I can easily ignore my detractors and feel the people who respond favorably.

I don't like talking about music.

In two senses: One is that you cannot go on the street and shout that you are an atheist, the other is that you are never given the intellectual framework for calling your faith into question.