It went from publisher to publisher to publisher. All of them refused it. They gave the same reasons, until a small publisher picked it up. From 1960 to 1963, three years, it didn’t sell 1500 copies. Nobody wanted to read it. It doesn’t matter. I am not here to sell, I’m here to write.

It’s easy to try to exaggerate the problems just to get more attention. So for me, it was very clear that the best way to deal with that was to do the best science that I was capable of doing.

They were blocked in their minds to do this because they thought, oh this is not done, we don’t do that in our field and you can’t do that, and I said: Why not?

There were times when I thought I wanted to be a cartoonist. If I weren’t a film director, I think cartoons would have been a good alternative. But I never properly studied drawing, so my drawings are strange. But when I’m prepping films, it’s good preparation — and comforting to me — to do the storyboards. It’s fun, too, like drawing a whole comic.

A lack of generosity. It can take so many forms—it doesn’t just have to do with money—so I’m always shocked when people can’t muster any at all.

The inclination to pretend I read a friend’s book when maybe I didn’t completely finish.

My discomfort with being alone.

Peacefully, knowing I’ll be composted in a mushroom suit.

And what happens for me is that I make a pot of beans on Sunday. And I also make some greens with chard, whatever I have available. And when I come to cook a meal or even to make myself breakfast, I may warm up some of those beans. I put a little tortilla right on the fire. I fill it up with the beans, maybe a little hot pepper, and I eat it. And that takes me exactly two minutes, three minutes, maybe. But it’s knowing how to cook. Those basic things have been taken away from us.

I decided that my attention would be in the dining room. I haven’t cooked in 28 years at Chez Panisse. ... I didn’t intend to be out of the kitchen. ... Now I’m in a different world and I contribute to the collaboration of the kitchen and I’m always working with a group of colleagues who inspire me, but I really miss being actually in the solving of the performance, that effort to really come up with dishes that are delicious and right.