A Chinese poet many centuries ago noticed that to re-create something in words is like being alive twice.

Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere; I would be different.

What has impressed me the most about the Italians whose tables we've sat at is that they are traditional cooks but also outrageously innovative. These people are wild improvisers.

Anytime the perfume of orange and lemon groves wafts in the window; the human body has to feel suffused with a languorous well-being.

Sometimes you have to travel back in time, skirting the obstacles, in order to love someone.

Venice, the most touristy place in the world, is still just completely magic to me.

I find that other countries have this or this, but Italy is the only one that has it all for me. The culture, the cuisine, the people, the landscape, the history. Just everything to me comes together there.