A lot of my reputation is a product of exaggeration and ignorance.

Success is born out of arrogance, but greatness comes from humility.

Mother Nature is the true artist and our job as cooks is to allow her to shine.

Once you accept you are being judged by people who have less knowledge than yourself, then what's it worth?

Gastronomy is the greatest form of therapy that anyone can be exposed to.

If you are not extreme, then people will take shortcuts because they don't fear you.

Strategy will compensate the talent. The talent will never compensate the strategy.

At the end of the day it's just food, isn't it? Just food.

I can't imagine anything worse than trying to impress a girl with dinner. To be honest, I'm always impressing myself, not other people.

A tree without roots is just a piece of wood.

Don't dress for others, dress for yourself. Clothes should be an extension of what you represent and what you feel inside.

Every emotion we feel is like one drop of rain in our heart. When our heart rain starts to overflow, it leaks out the window to our soul as a tear.

We thought all this teaching was to make us smart. What it did was make us stupid. With all the little facts we learned, we never had the time to think.

tonight i was taking down a man

At Christmas play and make good cheer, For Christmas comes but once a year.

Every age yearns for a more beautiful world. The deeper the desperation and the depression about the confusing present, the more intense that yearning.

Patrick Kenzie asking a bemused waitress for a newspaper in smalltown USA. 'It's like a homepage without a scroll button?'

In my tradition, one must wait until one has learned a lot of Bible and Talmud and the Prophets to handle mysticism. This isn't instant coffee. There is no instant mysticism.

Some people seem to see compassion as being mushy.

I'm quite good at going away from home. I don't live with my parents or anything. But it is tough when you're so far away from everyone.

So the life I have made May seem wrong to you But, I've never been surer It's my life to ruin My own way.