Everyone makes pesto in a food processor. But the texture is better with a mortar and pestle, and it's just as fast.

We would load up the yellow Cutlass Supreme station wagon and pick blackberries during blackberry season or spring onions during spring onion season. For us, food was part of the fabric of our day.

There are pockets of great food in Spain, but there are also pockets of very mediocre food in Spain, and the same in Morocco and the same in Croatia and the same in Germany and the same in Austria.

If you want your kids to listen to you, don't yell at them. Whisper. Make them lean in. My kids taught me that. And I do it with adults now.

I come from an Italian family. One of the greatest and most profound expressions we would ever use in conversations or arguments was a slamming door. The slamming door was our punctuation mark.

When I was a child, our whole family cooked. All my cousins cooked. All my aunts and uncles cooked. It was part of our heritage.

The passion of the Italian or the Italian-American population is endless for food and lore and everything about it.

I got some media coverage for using the tail, the ear, the oink.

Close your eyes and place your finger on a map. Wherever it lands, that's the theme of the evening. So many times we settle for routine dishes. This forces you to try new cuisines.

Chefs don't actually say 'That's a spicy meat-a-ball,' except to indicate that there's a bomb threat in the restaurant without alarming the customers. Terrorism is the spiciest meatball there is.

The kitchen really is the castle itself. This is where we spend our happiest moments and where we find the joy of being a family.

No more, no less. I'm an idiot. I really need to let this crush go.

A vacation is three times more work without the payment.

We are not born into the world. We are born into something that we make into the world.

The more you get set into your own world, the smaller your world becomes.

To the extent that one is responsible for one's life, one is alone.

I understand true life doesn't happen when I constantly gaze backwards, mulling over all the injustices others have done or I have done to others.

At least once a day, allow yourself the freedom to think and dream for yourself.

If you can't trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?

Hitler was never a socialist.

America is an empire that does not wish to be one ; we are easily discouraged from doing what must be done to maintain the global order that allows democracy and prosperity to flourish.