I've always thought that one of the least successful encounters is meeting a writer one admires. For one thing, writers are generally much kinder, more empathetic, more generous people on the page than they are in person.

I go to Japan every November on vacation, and the one thing I never return home without is yuba, which is the thin skin that forms atop boiling soy milk. You skim it off and either eat it fresh or dry it.

The first thing I do whenever I go to Thailand is seek out the closest restaurant or stall selling mango-and-sticky rice: it's a little hillock of glutinous rice drenched in lashings of coconut milk and served with fresh mango.

There are no kinder, more generous, more welcoming, more hospitable people in America than in the 92 counties of Indiana.

An intellectual is a person who's found one thing that's more interesting than sex.

Of course, no one has enough time to see every shop that Mumbai has: That would take more lifetimes than even the gods could offer.