Food made by hand is an act of defiance and runs contrary to everything in our modernity. Find it; eat it; it will go. It has been around for millennia. Now it is evanescent, like a season.

You can't do traditional work at a modern pace. Traditional work has traditional rhythms. You need calm. You can be busy, but you must remain calm.

In normal life, 'simplicity' is synonymous with 'easy to do,' but when a chef uses the word, it means 'takes a lifetime to learn.'

The most important knowledge is understanding what you can't do.

The family is the essential presence, the thing that never leaves you, even if you find you have to leave it.

The crowd is not us. It never is.

In normal life, "simplicity" is synonymous with "easy to do, " but when a chef uses the word, it means "takes a lifetime to learn.

The first glimpse I had of what Mario Batali's friends had described to me as the 'myth of Mario' was on a cold Saturday night in January 2002, when I invited him to a birthday dinner.

None of us can estimate what we do when we do it from instinct.

Everybody's got a hungry heart.

I play so many villains and strange, troubled people. I don't have that kind of life. I live in the country. I've been married nearly 50 years. I have a cat.

Try to take for a mate a person of your own neighborhood.

Yo, you don't think you're going under? I got a bullet with your name, your address, and your phone number.

I've traveled all over the country for years speaking in churches, teaching the Ten Commandments. It's amazing if 2 percent of any congregation knows the Ten Commandments.

I want a life of good sport, good people and the competition that goes with it.

Sanity is all that stands between good and evil.

People who lie to themselves about investing are the same as overweight people who blame their genes for their obesity.

Those who have come to an impasse should examine their original intentions; those who have succeeded should note where they are heading.