Quotes from Michael Pollan

At times I beheld visions of dazzling beauty—visions so rapturous, so unearthly, that no artist will ever paint them.

Thousands of plant and animal varieties have fallen out of commerce in the last century as industrial agriculture has focused its attentions on a small handful of high yielding and usually patented varieties, with qualities that suited them to things like mechanical harvesting and processing.

Nature does not teach its creatures to control their appetites except by the harshest of lessons—epidemics, mass death, extinctions. Nothing would be more natural than for humankind to burden the environment to the extent that it was rendered unfit for human life. Nature in that event would not be the loser, nor would it disturb her laws in the least—operating as it has always done, natural selection would unceremoniously do us in.

What would happen if we looked at the world beyond the garden this way, regarded our place in nature from the same upside-down perspective?

All these activities are forms of adult play that also serve as ceremonial acts of remembering—who we are, where we came from, how nature works.

USDA regulations spell out precisely what sort of facility and system is permissible, but they don't set thresholds for food-borne pathogens. (That would require the USDA to recall meat from packers who failed to meet the standards, something the USDA, incredibly, lacks the authority to do.)

The cancer is something completely out of my control, but the fear, I realized, is not.

Here in my garden the second law of thermodynamics is repealed. Here there is more every year, not less. Here it is ever early, never late. Here, in the ungainly form of a Sibley squash, newness comes into the world.

human desires that link their destinies to our own.

Seeds have the power to preserve species, to enhance cultural as well as genetic diversity, to counter economic monopoly and to check the advance of conformity on all its many fronts. "Preservation through Dissemination" is Hudson's credo, a principle he raises (need I mention it?) high above profit: Hudson calls on his subscribers to save and exchange seeds with him and one another;

More birds on a farm mean fewer insects, but most birds won't venture more than a couple hundred yards from the safety of cover. Like many species, their preferred habitat is the edge between forest and field. The biodiversity of the forest edge also helps control predators. As long as the weasels and coyotes have plenty of chipmunks and voles to eat, they're less likely to venture out and prey on the chickens.

In order of diminishing corniness, this is how the laboratory measured our meal: soda (100 percent corn), milk shake (78 percent), salad dressing (65 percent), chicken nuggets (56 percent), cheeseburger (52 percent), and French fries (23 percent).

Uncle Jeff insisted that I also take a tray of unseasoned barbecue, so I could see for myself that what's going on here at the Skylight Inn does not in any way, shape, or form depend for it's flavor or quality on sauce. That is a word he pronounces with an upturned lip and a slight sneer, suggesting that the use of barbecue sauce was at best a culinary crutch deserving of pity and at worst a moral failing.

We're in the explanation business, and if the answers to the questions we explore got too simple, we'd be out of work.

One of the greatest assets of a farm is the sheer ecstasy of life.

Because of diabetes and all the other health problems that accompany obesity, today's children may turn out to be the first generation of Americans whose life expectancy will actually be shorter than that of their parents. The

Many reports are given of deep mystical experiences," he wrote, "but their chief characteristic is the wonder at one's own profundity.

This leaves companies like General Mills and McDonald's with two options if they hope to grow faster than the population: figure out how to get people to spend more money for the same three-quarters of a ton of food, or entice them to actually eat more than that. The two strategies are not mutually exclusive, of course, and the food industry energetically pursues them both at the same time.

it tells me that consciousness is primary to the physical universe.

El verdadero método del conocimiento es la experimentación

Domesticated species don't command our respect the way their wild cousins often do. Evolution may reward interdependence, but our thinking selves continue to prize self-reliance.

They can print more money," he liked to say, "and they can print new stocks and bonds, but they can't print more land.

I could certainly eat more of this, but am I still hungry?

as much about the human desires that connect us to these plants as it is about the plants themselves.