I'm not trying to take New York by storm. I just want to sneak in there, keep my head down, batten down the hatches and cook.

Put your head down and work hard. Never wait for things to happen, make them happen for yourself through hard graft and not giving up.

I don't like looking back. I'm always constantly looking forward. I'm not the one to sort of sit and cry over spilt milk. I'm too busy looking for the next cow.

Chefs are nutters. They're all self-obsessed, delicate, dainty, insecure little souls and absolute psychopaths. Every last one of them.

Swearing is industry language. For as long as we're alive it's not going to change. You've got to be boisterous to get results.

If you want to become a great chef, you have to work with great chefs. And that's exactly what I did.

The minute you start compromising for the sake of massaging somebody's ego, that's it, game over.

Kitchens are hard environments and they form incredibly strong characters.

The problem with Yanks is they are wimps.

There's a bond among a kitchen staff, I think. You spend more time with your chef in the kitchen than you do with your own family.

Push your limit to the absolute extreme.

Hell man, I know very well you didn't come to me only to want to become a writer, and after all what do I really know about it except that you've got to stick to it with the energy of a benny addict.

Money, fame and personal possessions should never be your metric for measuring your passion.

Pain and pleasure like light and darkness succeed each other.

No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy.

Well, I'm reading about the battle of New Orleans right now. I've got an eclectic reading list.

Thrift is an attractive idea until you get down to specifics.

If you're opposites, you complement each other; you aren't jealous. Just annoyance and fighting, as opposed to rivalry.

My mom didn't write, but she loved to read. She liked books 'that made you a little nervous.' Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Peter Straub were the three wise men of our family bookshelf.

I must endure...for the world for the children.

The labor of the alchemists, who were called artist in their day, is a befitting comparison for a deliberate change of style.