“Anyone who has ever been an ugly adolescent - and we are legion - know...” — Ruth Reichl Quote

“Anyone who has ever been an ugly adolescent - and we are legion - knows that the feeling of being unlovely and unlovable never goes away; it is always there, lurking just beneath the surface.”

“Sharing food has always had a central place in civilized societies; it's no accident that so many of our cultural, religious and patriotic rituals are involved with eating.”

“My mother really would make these dreadful concoctions. She really prided herself on something called 'Everything Stew,' where she would take everything in the refrigerator, all the leftovers, and put them all together.”

“I always had that adolescent notion that I had to get out of Texas. But I'm really glad I grew up there. It's where I learned to look people in the eye, to be straightforward and polite.”

“Secondary school parents tell me that they are frustrated, that their teachers ignore them, their children don't give them much feedback because they are adolescents, they feel kind of out of the loop.”

“I first read 'The Lord of the Rings' as an adolescent. It's a dense novel, a sprawling, complex monster of a book populated with a prolific number of characters caught up in a narrative structure that, frankly, does not lend itself to conventional storytelling.”