When you add just a little bit [of Tabasco] at the end, what you taste is the spectrum between the cooked chile flavor and the kind of nearly raw, just kind of fermented chile flavor at the end.

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.

If one is not a meditator, howsoever good one is it is all useless.

What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.

When I grow up, I want to be an actress. But I want to be a legend of something.

I like to roast things from the inside out. I like to know what's going on.

I don't like money very much, but it calms my nerves.

U.S. has no feudal background, so institutions that remained in place in Europe did not remain in place here.

(Britney Spears) went in for knee surgery and came out a little top heavy.

If you find a way to write with open heart to Diary, a friend with Truth, no detail spared, your tome like Petrarch’s works will contain the scattered fragments of your soul.

In science-fiction films the monster should always be bigger than the leading lady.

Do to me, O Allah, what is worthy of Thee; And not what is worthy of me.