I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.

Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.

A city is a place where there is no need to wait for next week to get the answer to a question, to taste the food of any country, to find new voices to listen to and familiar ones to listen to again.

Men do not have to cook their food they do so for symbolic reasons to show they are men and not beasts.

When I get a little money I buy books and if any is left I buy food and clothes.