“We arrived from New York after a daylong slog through airports and planes and traffic. It was 10: 00 p.m. local time, but my body had no idea if it was night or day. Krishna was hungry, so I found ...”

“Simply being born female in our society is to grow up being told your worth as a person is tied to how slim and attractive you are. Even for those of us lucky enough to have evolved parents, the me...”

“I once asked her if she was happy. That depends on what I am able to get done today, she said, laughing. She told me that the completion of her daily tasks was the only thing she felt she had contr...”

“But because divorce was so unheard of in middle-class Indian society, people looked at divorces with a sort of incredulous shock and wonder, as if they were somehow criminals. They were ostracized ...”

“Its funny to me that most of the cooking in the world is done by women, and yet when you look at modern Western cuisine, its largely based on what a few dead Frenchmen have opined to be the correct...”

“The secrets of the kitchen were revealed to you in stages, on a need-to-know basis, just like the secrets of womanhood. You started wearing bras; you started handling the pressure cooker for lentil...”

“If you stand in a wheat field at this time of year, a few weeks from harvest, it's not hard to imagine you're looking at something out of mythology: all this golden sunlight brought down to earth, ...”

“You have come nearer to mastering a good many aspects of cooking than anyone except a handful of great chefs, and some day it will pay off. I know it will. You will just have to go on working, and ...”

“I turned from my window. Suddenly it seemed odd for my neighbors on both sides to have visitors while I had none. For the first time, I felt lonely at 'Sconset."Let's cook," Frannie said energetica...”

“work at our responsibility as parents as if everything in life counted on it, because in fact everything in life does count on it.”

“Happiness [is] only real when shared”

“That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable.”