I wasnt using college as a stepping stone to law school or some other career. I just wanted a liberal-arts education.

If you want the meaning of families and life and religion and philosophy rolled into one package, all you need to read is The Brothers Karamazov.

Cuisine is only about making foods taste the way they are supposed to taste.

I couldnt really relate to the fraternity or party scene, to the people out in the mall every day protesting one thing or another. I felt like there was no one I could relate to.

I never considered Miles Davis a perfectionist; I always considered him as an excellence-ist, where deviation is actually kind of cool.

What I was reading was already part of my psyche, but finally someone else was saying it's okay to walk alone.

I have always looked at it this way: If you strive like crazy for perfection - an all-out assault on total perfection - at the very least you will hit a high level of excellence, and then you might be able to sleep at night. To accomplish something truly significant, excellence has to become a life plan.