Going to Europe as a budding cook opened my eyes to food in a different way. When I got to Italy, the first thing I did was put my little basil plants in the ground and watch them turn into big, healthy bushes.

There is no technique, there is just the way to do it. Now, are we going to measure or are we going to cook?

One of those flash epiphanies of travel, the realization that worlds you'd love vibrantly exist outside your ignorance of them. The vitality of many lives you know nothing about. I could live in this town, so how is it that I've never been here before today?

The longer you are in a place, the more you get under its layers.

It's kind of amazing that people will travel because of a book. I admire that.

Indecision is a virus that can run through an army and destroy its will to win or even to survive.

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