“How can it be, after all this concentrated effort and separation, how can it be that I still resemble, so very closely, my own detestable mother?”

“...as soon as I saw the three-bin stainless steel pot sink, exactly like ours, I felt instantly at home and fell into peeling potatoes and scraping plates for the dishwasher like it was my own skin. And that, just like that, is how a whole life can start.”

“I am often slow in catching up to the times, but even so, I still cannot even grip this idea: With nothing more than pitocin in your IV drip, you can sooner control the date and time of the birth of a human being-- the gushing entry into the great blue world of a whole new person-- than you can the scheduling of a few line cooks in your operation.”

“For the first time in probably the entire decade that had passed since I had seen or spoken to my own mother, I thought warm and grateful thoughts about her. She instilled in us nothing but a total and unconditional pleasure in food and eating.”

“There are two things you should never do with your father: learn how to drive and learn how to kill a chicken.”

“This is the crepe. This is the cider. This is how we live and eat.”

“But it was from him - with his cool, long sideburns and aviator sunglasses, and box of watercolor paints (and artist's paycheck) - from him we learned how to create beauty where none exists, how to be generous beyond our means, how to change a small corner of the world just by making a little dinner for a few friends.”