“Christmas cookies can't help but be retro - they are memory first, sugar-flour-egg-redhot-gumdrop-sparkle reality second.”

“Food as a hobby used to be an elite pastime, and it has become something that is totally ordinary for people of every background. In that way, we see the growing up of the American food scene: that it's okay to be a regular person and be really into food.”

“Food is a lens for culture.”

“For me, it makes sense to address shocking experiences through poems because of the way poems also have that effect on the reader.”

“Hollywood, the business, would be just fine if someone were to destroy the Hollywood sign. The city's there is the airport - its point of entry and exit, and in some ways its identity.”

“I developed my taste for coffee at five, staying with my grandmother in Connecticut.”

“I don't think that I ever believed that poetry would be a career. I have always thought of poems as something more private than professional... I would never introduce myself as a poet. I will always have some other thing that I am.”

“I find that people in the food world are amazingly willing to talk about what they are doing, even when those things are quasi-legal or taboo.”

“I love trying new restaurants.”

“I think for diners, it is about crafting an identity around food which we have not really had in a mainstream way in this country. So there is a mass movement of people who identify themselves through their food preferences or even just that they prioritize food - that's where we get this idea of being a foodie.”

“I was terrified of taking the G.R.E.”

“I will eat disgusting things, but only those with long established culinary traditions.”

“If this is the end of the world, give me a fork and a knife.”

“I'm a total foodie.”

“Like funny men, skilled diners are apparently perceived to have an evolutionary advantage.”

“Like the rest of the city, LAX is coming of age.”

“Los Angeles is a city of few hard targets. Its iconic buildings are private spaces, mostly residential, visible by invitation only or in the pages of a Taschen book. Its central industry is as mirage-like as the projection of light on a screen.”

“Los Angeles is a good city in which to be a reporter. Always entertaining, always an incubator.”

“My relationship to food is that of an acrophobe to a bridge. Unease masks a desire to jump.”

“The food being presented at the most expensive restaurants, by the most sophisticated chefs, was not always recognizable as food to the diner - it required a leap of faith, and I felt curious about that phenomenon.”

“There's something about the shape that a poem takes in my mind before I write it that has to do with suddenness.”

“Ultimately, taste is so niche and so personal.”