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

Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in the basement. Other people get a tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music.

The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude.

I'm a beet freak. I put them in the pressure cooker.

Anything that says 'healthy' I say away from... Giving up butter, for instance, means that in about two years you will be covered in dandruff.

I think one of the terrible things today is that people have this deathly fear of food: fear of eggs, say, or fear of butter. Most doctors feel that you can have a little bit of everything.

One of the important requirements for learning how to cook is that you also learn how to eat.