I think careful cooking is love, don't you? The loveliest thing you can cook for someone who's close to you is about as nice a valentine as you can give.

Life itself is the proper binge.

I was a romantic, messy thinker. I was raised with very conservative beliefs, but that was a long time ago.

It's hard to imagine a civilization without onions; in one form or another their flavor blends into almost everything in the meal except the desert.

You don’t spring into good cooking naked. You have to have some training. You have to learn how to eat.

Upon reflection, I decided I had three main weaknesses: I was confused (evidenced by a lack of facts, an inability to coordinate my thoughts, and an inability to verbalize my ideas); I had a lack of confidence, which cause me to back down from forcefully stated positions; and I was overly emotional at the expense of careful, 'scientific' though. I was thirty-seven years old and still discovering who I was.

The shellfish thing is very scary. You have to know the people you buy from and exactly where their wholesalers are getting the fish from.