“When we eat together, when we set out to do so deliberately, life is better, no matter what your circumstances.”

“Marriage has the power to set the course of your life as a whole. If your marriage is strong, even if all the circumstances in your life around you are filled with trouble and weakness, it won't matter. You will be able to move out into the world in strength.”

“Cooking is not about convenience and it's not about shortcuts. Our hunger for the twenty-minute gourmet meal, for one-pot ease and prewashed, precut ingredients has severed our lifeline to the satisfactions of cooking. Take your time. Take a long time. Move slowly and deliberately and with great attention.”

“When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.”

“When you acknowledge, as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving toward perfection becomes clear: to make people happy, that is what cooking is all about.”

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”