It's a challenge to demonstrate that you can prepare some really interesting food with humble ingredients.

My parents couldnt be looser. It was the ultimate laissez faire upbringing.

My fantasy is to have a restaurant where there are no written menus, but where you just ask people, What are you in the mood for? Fish? Meat? White wine?

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

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.

Excellence is about fighting and pursuing something diligently, with a strict and determined approach to doing it right. It's okay if there are flaws in the process - it makes it more interesting.

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