“When I was a kid, Halloween was strictly a starchy-vegetable-only holi...” — Susan Orlean Quote

“When I was a kid, Halloween was strictly a starchy-vegetable-only holiday, with pumpkins and Indian corn on the front stoop; there was nothing electric, nothing inflatable, nothing with latex membranes or strobes.”

“I once had a boyfriend who couldn't write unless he was wearing a necktie and a dress shirt, which I thought was really weird, because this was a long time ago, and no one I knew ever wore dress shirts, let alone neckties; it was like he was a grown-up reenacter or something.”

“The genius of a folk melody or story is not the feeling that it's original but quite the opposite - the feeling that it has existed all along.”

“I think overall, from a deputy, from an undersecretary standpoint, the goal of a good leader is to get diversity across there. Geographical diversity is important. Industry diversity is important: you can't have all corn growers... Not only that, you've got gender diversity, you've got racial diversity.”

“If your corn has a herbicide-tolerant gene, it means you can spray your herbicides and kill the weeds; you won't kill your corn because it's producing a gene that makes it tolerant of the herbicide.”

“The Indian Corn, or Maiz, proves the most useful Grain in the World; and had it not been for the Fruitfulness of this Species, it would have proved very difficult to have settled some of the Plantations in America.”