Ultimately, the perfect meal is when those things come together - circumstance, the food, ambiance, and you're with the person that you want to be with.

It's not really the life of cooking that's hard - it's what you make of it and what level you push yourself to.

Anything that could ever prevent me from achieving a goal, I put in a box, tape it up, throw it over my shoulder. You aim for a goal and attain it. Then you look to the next one.

Food can be expressive and therefore food can be art.

Food is a necessary component to life. People can live without Renoir, Mozart, Gaudi, Beckett, but they cannot live without food.

My personality was always such that I always look straight forward, never behind or to the side.

What makes the food that we do at Alinea so interesting on the outside is that we really don't let ourselves say no to an idea.

I had D minuses in chemistry and all of the sciences, and now I'm known as a molecular gastronomist.

We all eat two to six times a day. Why? Because we are supposed to, we are programmed to, we want to.

To me, every kitchen appliance is useful and nothing's overrated. When I look at my little espresso machine, I don't see coffee. I see a steaming valve as an opportunity to make amazing creme brulee.

Most smoked salts are made with liquid smoke, which is a condensate, but really, really good smoked salt is literally smoked.

What counted was not the facts but the fears.

A man is likely as a woman to be intelligent, innovative and creative. We have evolved. But our ideas of gender have not evolved very much.

Ever hear of the phrase, Banging you're head on a brick wall?"Ah, but you forget, Darren, vampires can break brick walls with their heads.

Would you still read me when I become a blank page.

All of us kids ended up 'doing Mom.' There are four of us who've tried show business. Five if you insist on counting my sister the nun, who does liturgical dance.

But I can also write in crappy motel rooms, while standing in line, or sitting in the dentist's chair.

Decide how much you want to be earning one year, five years and ten years from today. What will you have to do to achieve these amounts.

It takes many steppingstones, you know, for a man to rise. None can do it unaided

The first principle of a civilized state is that power is legitimate only when it is under contract.

You have to gather your energy together...conserving it and insulating it from dissipation in every direction other than that of your purpose.