Ruth Reichl

What I like best is the challenge of learning something I didn't know how to do, going beyond my comfort level.

I meet people, and we can get past small talk pretty quickly if they've read my books. It's a great shortcut.

There is that romanticized idea of what a bookstore can be, what a library can be, what a shop can be. And to me, they are that. These are places that open doors into other worlds if only you're open to them.

The critic has to do more of what the book critics and art critics have done in the past. Which is give you a context for understanding the restaurant, give you a better way to appreciate it, give you the tools to go in there and be a more informed diner who can get more pleasure out of the experience.

It takes a great deal of strength to be an optimist.

What I always do in times of trouble or stress is to try and do something I don't know how to do.

One of the effects of cheap food is, we have food that is so unsatisfactory. We need to go back to flavor.

If you go back in American history, oysters were the food of poor people. New York was filled with oyster saloons in the 1800s.

American food is the food of immigrants. You go back a couple of hundred years, and we were all immigrants, unless we're going to talk about Native American cuisine.

My idea of good living is not about eating high on the hog. Rather, to me, good living means understanding how food connects us to the earth.

What I learned is that how we present ourselves to the world is really how we get treated. So if you want to be treated really well in a restaurant, you really have to dress up. You cannot just show up.

I loved being at the 'Times,' and they were incredibly good to me. I think it's a wonderful paper, and I was really well edited.