There are many people who claim to be good cooks; just as there are many people who, after having repainted the garden gate take themselves to be painters.

If the divine creator has taken pains to give us delicious and exquisite things to eat, the least we can do is prepare them well and serve them with ceremony.

As far as cuisine is concerned one must read everything, see everything, hear everything, try everything, observe everything, in order to retain in the end, just a little bit.

The duty of a good Cuisinier is to transmit to the next generation everything he has learned and experienced.

In all professions without doubt, but certainly in cooking one is a student all his life.

Success is the sum of a lot of small things done correctly.

Every morning the cuisinier must start again at zero, with nothing on the stove. That is what real cuisine is all about.

Perfection is lots of little things done well.

I'm not hard to please, I'm content with the very best.

A good apprentice cook must be as polite with the dishwasher as with the chef.

Cooking is for capturing the taste of the food and then enhancing it, as a composer may take a theme and then delight us with his variations.

Almost everything carried to its logical extreme becomes either depressing or carcinogenic.

A difficulty for every solution.

I would love to do a reunion tour if it only involved basements across the U.S.

If not for my family, I would have been in big trouble.

Democracy derailed is democracy denied.

I don't think it feels like a burden. We did not really think of it ["Mary and Jane"] that way. I think it is certainly how we branded. The thing it does is enables us to be a little bit surreal.

My greatest asset now is my focus.

Her world had shrunk - no matter who she was with, she'd prefer to be with him. That's what happened when you fell in love - you only want to see them.

I've always been a big proponent of not working for the sake of working, because I don't want to work for the rest of my life - I want to live.

What was the worst thing you've ever done? I won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me...the most dreadful thing.