“More to distract her than from any real sense of hunger, he said, “Got any more of that chicken you cook for the dog?” Rune was just too . . . something. In the kitchen, Carling shoved several large pieces of cooking flesh around in the skillet and glared at them.”

“She was a great cook, but she cooked more for herself than for other people, not because she was hungry but because she was comforted by the rituals of the kitchen.”

“The pieces of soul can't be cut out without filling them up again, that's a real law there. God's law. Can't cut out the pieces any more than you can go around with a big hole in your gut. Got to be plugged up, replaced somehow.”

“The task of any good cook, of any parent, is to be present- in the kitchen and out. To taste all the items, absorb each child's day, all those moments, and form them into the day's meals.”

“No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.”

“Such is life. It is no cleaner than a kitchen; it reeks like a kitchen; and if you mean to cook your dinner, you must expect to soil your hands; the real art is in getting them clean again, and therein lies the whole morality of our epoch.”