All the great chefs I know - Thomas Keller, Jean-Georges Vongerichten - they are technicians first.

You can't escape the taste of the food you had as a child. In times of stress, what do you dream about? Your mother's clam chowder. It's security, comfort. It brings you home.

Cooking is the art of adjustment.

If you have extraordinary bread and extraordinary butter, it's hard to beat bread and butter.

When I pair food and wine, I start with the food. If I have a beautiful roasted bird, I might choose a Cabernet or Pinot Noir, or maybe a Syrah, depending on the sauce and what is in my cellar.

My palate is simpler than it used to be. A young chef adds and adds and adds to the plate. As you get older, you start to take away.

When you are at home, even if the chicken is a little burnt, what's the big deal? Relax.

Great cooking favors the prepared hands.

After 45 years of marriage, when I have an argument with my wife, if we don't agree, we do what she wants. But, when we agree, we do what I want!

When you become a good cook, you become a good craftsman, first. You repeat and repeat and repeat until your hands know how to move without thinking about it.

I am a glutton. I'll eat whatever is there. Pizza. I love hot dogs anywhere. I've got nothing against any of that. If I feel like eating, I eat. I don't feel guilty about it at all.

History is not a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken, but rather, a glorious tale which I wish to be cast in.

I write because I am a writer, not because I want to get anything out of it.

He's completely complicated. And lost. And frustrating. But we do something for each other. . . . We fit. We need each other.

Don't trust a guy who accuses you of infidelity. He's cheating. He's projecting. If you're living that kind of life, you think everybody else is too.

I'm in the kitchen and I'm not walking out.

I hate Bernard Shaw because he says that life is compromise.

The pleasure of the table belongs to all ages, to all conditions, to all countries, and to all areas; it mingles with all other pleasures, and remains at last to console us for their departure.

We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors . . . But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters.

I have great respect for Craig Lucas. I absolutely adore his sensibility.

Preachers must always fight the temptation to preach anything but Christ and Him crucified.