I have a lot of energy. I have a great desire to absorb information. I’m not a sponge exactly, but I find that something I look at — just walking around Williamsburg, for example — is a great opportunity for ideas. I’ve been here before, I’ve seen things before, but now my eye gets keener and keener. So I can pick up little things: just the pattern of a brick walk, or the way they’ve attached a light to a house.

I have sometimes, probably, forgotten - and I know I have - to pat the back of someone or said thank you enough times or maybe even once sometimes I wish I were perfect. I wish I were just the nicest, nicest, nicest person on Earth. But I am a business person.If I were a man no one would ever say that I was arrogant.

It's all about new techniques -- simplifying old techniques, and consolidating steps. Making things go faster, but not worse.

I support Alice Waters in her desire that there be a vegetable garden at the White House. I don't think they should rip up the Rose Garden, because that's something that I love. They should probably dig up another patch and grow some vegetables there.

I think baking cookies is equal to Queen Victoria running an empire. There's no difference in how seriously you take the job, how seriously you approach your whole life.

I live in an old house with no closets and no built-ins. I hate big cupboards.

Basement smells bad. Look for cat poops, change litter.