People need to understand. If they go to a show on Broadway and find seventy people working but only fifty spectators, how much would the ticket cost? That's what El Bulli's about. There are seventy actors who are playing for just fifty spectators. Is the price expensive? It's relative. How much does a normal dinner at a five-star hotel restaurant cost? Four hundred dollars. It's the same as El Bulli. But you can also think of it this way: How much would it cost to eat something that nobody else is eating?

I think my virtue was I never thought "This is impossible.

I had a very normal childhood, and my mother cooked very normal food.

We need to think about what cooking is, what context it takes place in and what its relationship to the world of art is. If there were criticisms of my presence at Documenta, that's a good thing because it means we were doing something new. Your mission in creating something artistic is to produce something new and polemical.

Remember that a very good sardine is always preferable to a not that good lobster.

If I don't have pressure, I don't function.

Friends are really important, especially when you've had the successes that I've had. I've gone really far in my career, so they're the ones that keep you humble, keep your feet on the ground.