Are we Darwinists - where we live and let live? Or are we nurturing as a society? There has to be a standard of living that we decide to support.

Passion is what adds so much value to life. And if you think about the things that you do, there's so much juice potential for them if you do it.

Italy itself has 21 different micro-regions. You go within each of those regions, there's even super-micro-regions; and the beauty is that when you go from place to place, although there's a common thread of pasta and joie de vivre - in the way that they approach their meals and the simplicity of cooking, celebrating more the product than the chef - there's still so much variety that as you go, it's always an exciting moment.

I don't put cream in any pasta noodles ever. I would use a little butter, but I don't ever use cream.

There's a pretty equitable distribution in the restaurant industry of how money gets paid, except for in the kitchen. The kitchen is the lowest-paid group of people.

All the information you could want is constantly streaming at you like a runaway truck - books, newspaper stories, Web sites, apps, how-to videos, this article you're reading, even entire magazines devoted to single subjects like charcuterie or wedding cakes or pickles.

The tradition of Italian cooking is that of the matriarch. This is the cooking of grandma. She didn't waste time thinking too much about the celery. She got the best celery she could and then she dealt with it.