Journalist

Salt is an unusual food product because it is almost universal - all human beings need salt, and most choose to eat more than is necessary.

The entire trendy foodie world - food writing, food television, celebrated restaurants - is all about food for the rich. But the most important food issue is how to feed the poor or the hardworking middle class.

What you seem to find when you get into this biography business is that people tend to have an image of themselves that they want to project, and they want to color statements by this image.

The inventors we remember didn't invent anything. They're the people who took somebody else's invention and made it commercially viable.

In 'A Chosen Few,' I spent hours and hours listening to the pain of people of who had survived wondering why they survived and what their life means and what right do they have to survive.

I'm an urban person.

In 'A Chosen Few,' I spent hours and hours listening to the pain of people of who had survived wondering why they survived and what their life means and what right do they have to survive.

I am first and foremost a storyteller; I want to tell a good story, and I want it to mean something - something that I think is important.

Violence does not resolve. It always leads to more violence.

When you're in theater, you inevitably wind up working in restaurants. I made pastry.

Don't forget the Vietnam War was brought to us by Democrats.

In the course of my research, I've read a lot of incredibly bad books - mostly by academics. I'm puzzled as to just why their writing is so terrible. These are smart people, after all.

Europeans are far more anti-war than Americans. They've had more wars, and they really just don't believe in it any more. But Americans do.

I always wanted to write a book about a common food that becomes a commercial commodity and therefore becomes economically important and therefore becomes politically important and culturally important. That whole process is very interesting to me. And salt seemed to me the best example of that, partly because it's universal.

It's difficult when you travel around America to get local food; it used to be very easy. You went from town to town and were more in touch with things.

I sometimes think there is nothing really to be said about a novel but 'read the book.' I have a jaundiced view of literary critics.

I'm interested in most everything.

I have lost count of how many wars I have actively and largely ineffectively tried to stop.

I always wanted an extraordinary life. When it's over, I want to be able to say that I did it.

The Pilgrims were unified by their religious zeal, but they couldn't fish, they didn't know how to hunt, and they were bad at farming. In fact, they never had a good harvest until they learned to fish cod and plow the waste in the ground as fertilizer.