"My grandmother was a kind of Scarsdale, New York, society woman, best known in her day as the author of the 1959 book 'Growing Your Own Way: An Informal Guide for Teen-Agers' - this despite being a person whose parenting style made Joan Crawford's wire hangers look like pool noodles."

"My personality, when tasked with creating meals, goes something like this: Is there a way we can make this more difficult? Because let's do that. I don't mean to complicate things. It's just - why buy pre-packaged potato salad when you can spend your morning boiling potatoes and flipping out because there's no dill in the house?"

"Our culture's obsession with vintage objects has rendered us unable to separate history from nostalgia. People want heart. They want a chaser of emotion with their aesthetics."

"I like to try to do a little work before I do anything in the morning, even if it's a paragraph."

"The most important impact of the computer is that it has forced us to think about how we think."

"Before you start some work, always ask yourself three questions - Why am I doing it, What the results might be and Will I be successful. Only when you think deeply and find satisfactory answers to these questions, go ahead."

"I think my love of journalizing my life comes from my mom."

"The science of the mind can only have for its proper goal the understanding of human nature by every human being, and through its use, brings peace to every human soul."