It is usually best to start drinking after breakfast. But in this very special case I will make an exception.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

… in these moments, you can normally find an Italian who isn’t too picky.

Luck, it must be said, is a loaded word. Sometimes someone’s luck is nothing of their own doing, a result of the privilege of their birth. Sometimes we mean luck in the purest way, the happenstance of sitting next to the right person on a bus. (This sort of luck seems practically mythical; one wonders if it ever happens.) But for many people, “luck” is something of their own making: They work hard, network, self-promote, and so on, and one day, they end up in the right place at the right time and catch their break. Is that luck? Not in the same way, and telling someone who has worked hard that their success is a result of luck is insulting.

I don’t think it’s fair that Monsanto should be able to sue my family for patent infringement because their transgenic seed trespasses onto our farm and contaminates and ruins our organic crop. We have had to abandon raising corn because we are afraid Monsanto wouldn’t control their genetic pollution and then they would come after us for patent infringement. It’s not right.

…the very best way to build the kind of social movement needed to produce…systemic changes…is to start small: to share knowledge and to share meals.

I like large parties, they’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.