“He said we were all cooked but we were all right as long as we did not know it. We were all cooked. The thing was not to recognize it. The last country to realize they were cooked would win the war.”

“If we were taught to cook as we are taught to walk, encouraged first to feel for pebbles with our toes, then to wobble forward and fall, then had our hands firmly tugged on so we would try again, we would learn that being good at it relies on something deeply rooted, akin to walking, to get good at which we need only guidance, senses, and a little faith. We aren't often taught to cook like that, so when we watch people cook naturally, in what looks like an agreement between cook and cooked, we think that they were born with an ability to simply know that an egg is done, that the fish needs flipping, and that the soup needs salt. Instinct, whether on the ground or in the kitchen, is not a destination but a path.”

“We were all ready to die for the country but what we did not discover was we have to live for the country.”

“So we cooked the flounder and ate every single bite. It was huge, and we were stuffed. It was worse than Thanksgiving. I mean it was better.”

“they were looking for housekeepers and cooks, and I was dying to get out of Australia and see the rest of the world. It's a Sagittarius thing, you know. We just move on and on, like tumbleweeds.”

“It happened so long ago I can't even be sure it happened as I say it did. Stories change in the telling, memory makes up as much as it knows. We were very small. The things we saw were all mixed up with the things we dreamed and the things we were scared of.”