“What was so extraordinary to me about going through this box of my mother's letters and diaries was meeting my mother not as my mother, but as a real person. And what breaks my heart is that I had no idea how self-aware she was and how protective of me she was.”

American chef, food writer, and editor

Ruth Reichl is an American chef, food writer, and editor. For two decades, she worked as a food critic, mainly at the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times. She has 112 quotes on the site. Reichl has also written cookbooks, memoirs, and a novel. Outside print, she served as co-producer of PBS's Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie, culinary editor for the Modern Library, host of PBS's Gourmet's Adventures With Ruth, and editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine. She has won six James Beard Foundation Awards.