“I enjoy doing housework, ironing, washing, cooking, dishwashing. Whenever I get one of those questionaires and they ask what is your profession, I always put down housewife. It's an admirable profession, why apologize for it. You aren't stupid because you're a housewife. When you're stirring the jam you can read Shakespeare.”

“I asked Lila, the owner, what the secret ingredient was, she told me it was happiness. She said when you put happiness into what you cook, it tastes so much better. She told me when you put happiness into your job and your relationships, they grow. If you're not enjoying what you're doing or who you're doing it with, it won't turn out, she told me.”

“Your profession is not what brings home your weekly paycheck, your profession is what you're put here on earth to do, with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.”

“Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion.”

“Why, June, you sound surprised.” He’d put on an offended-housewife voice, but it was in a hoarse whisper, so it sounded like an offended housewife who smoked five packs of cigarettes a day. I laughed.”

“There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you're writing, and aren't writing particularly well.”