the more experience you have, the more interesting cooking is because you know what can happen to the food. In the beginning you can look at a chicken and it doesn't mean much, but once you have done some cooking you can see in that chicken a parade of things you will be able to create.

I still feel that French cooking is the most important in the world, one of the few that has rules. If you follow the rules, you can do pretty well.

...nothing is too much trouble if it turns out the way it should.

In France cooking is a serious art form and a national sport. I think the French enjoy the complication of the art form and the cooking for cooking's sake. You can talk with a concierge or police officer about food in France as a general rule. It is not the general rule here. Classical cuisine, which I hope we are going back to, means certain ways of doing things and certain ways of not doing things. If you know classical French cooking you can do anything. If you don't know the basics, you turn out slop.

People were hysterical about Communism the way people today are hysterical about flag burning. I'm really against these people who try to show that they're great patriots, because they're not thinking, they're just being hysterical.

People who are not interested in food always seem rather dry and unloving and don't have a real gusto for life.

A house without a cat is like a day without sunshine, a pie without fromage, a dinner without wine.