I associated the term Epicurean with a refinement of taste and an ability to savor. As I ruminated on the proposition of simple living, it seemed to me that if in our time we could learn to savor the goodness of little, everyday things, we could get more out of less and abandon our ruinous gluttony. Furthermore, in my own experiments in simple living, I hoped to relinquish my gluttony for punishment — my puritanism and apocalypticism — in favor of the sensuous. The Roman poet Lucretius, literature's foremost Epicurean, said of the senses, "These we trust, first, last and always."

— Stephanie Mills, Epicurean Simplicity