Without new ideas success can become stale

When I'm doing a book tour in the States, I'll wake up in the room sometimes in an anonymous chain hotel, and I don't know where I am right away. I'll go to the window, and it doesn't help there either, especially if you're in an anonymous strip and it's the usual Victoria's Secret, Gap, Chili's, Applebee's.

Free time is my enemy. I recognized early on I'm not a guy who should have a lot of time to contemplate the mysteries of the universe. I need to stay busy... That's just the nature of my demons.

Those places I don't understand, just doing bad food. It takes some doing. Making good pasta is so much easier than making bad stuff. It actually takes quite an effort to make poor linguine pomodora.

Without Montreal, Canada would be hopeless.

I'd like to make a show with Keith Richards.

The bible of cooking. The all-time argument ender. Early in my cooking career, I wielded my Larousse like a weapon and it never let me down.