I admired the English immensely for all that they had endured, and they were certainly honorable, and stopped their cars for pedestrians, and called you “sir” and “madam,” and so on. But after a week there, I began to feel wild. It was those ruddy English faces, so held in by duty, the sense of “what is done” and “what is not done,” and always swigging tea and chirping, that made me want to scream like a hyena

There are reasons, and then there are excuses.

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

People liked to eat veal until they saw pictures of these darling little animals with brown eyes. Veal calves been raised the same way for centuries.

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.

Cooking hasn't yet been accepted as the art form it is. It should be on the level with any of the other art forms.

Once you have mastered a technique, you barely have to look at a recipe again