Basically, the person in the White House should be principled, should have a philosophy about food that relates directly to organic agriculture. I will continue to push for that.

If I weren't involved with food, I'd be working in architecture. Design is that critical to me.

I feel like old age in America is a very sad thing. I have been many different places around the world where getting older is something you look forward to.

I really appreciate the many neighbourhoods of Berkeley. There is still the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. And it has the University of California, which is the greatest gift, to my mind, to be close to it. It keeps the place alive.

I hate to say that my mother was 'just a housewife', because in addition to that she has had lots of part-time secretarial jobs in factories and hospitals, always working really hard for our family.

Adults tell students that it gets better, that the world changes after school, that being 'different' will pay off sometime after graduation. But no one explains to them why.

My parents were fantastic. I was an only child, so I had a lot of love and too much attention. I don't think I was spoilt. My mother was quite a disciplinarian, but I did have a lot of attention and quite a lot of pressure to do well at whatever I was doing.

I come from a family of teasers myself. My grandfather was from Liverpool, and he had a dry sense of humor, and he would tease us terribly. My brother Beau was so skilled in his teasing that he could get a rise out of me by simply pointing at me.