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

When I got to France I realized I didn't know very much about food at all. I'd never had a real cake. I'd had those cakes from cake mixes or the ones that have a lot of baking powder in them. A really good French cake doesn't have anything like that in it - it's all egg power.

I have trouble with toast. Toast is very difficult. You have to watch it all the time or it burns up.

Forget the cheap white wine: go to beef and gin!

Any disaster is a learning process.

I was going to be a great woman novelist. Then the war came along and I think it's hard for young people today, don't you, to realize that when World War II happened we were dying to go and help our country.

Cooking is one failure after another, and that's how you finally learn.