Risk is the sort of word that is easy to discuss upfront but tough to handle when it comes time to pay the piper. There will always be some who wimp out and second-guess when the pain hits, but that is a childish reaction.

When we first did 'Modernist Cuisine,' I think most people in cookbook publishing would have said, 'This is insane.'

New online formats gutted the newspaper-ad business. Why pore over tiny print looking for a job in the want ads when you can tap a few keywords into monster.com, then click through and apply? Why pay a steep per-character rate for a classified when you can hawk a whole garage full of used stuff on EBay or Craigslist for free?

The world has shown that if you provide capital and expertise to an area that is starved for capital and expertise, really good things will happen.

Technological 'revolutions' don't really overthrow anything - they simply append a new and dynamic market to that which went before.

When I was about nine years old, I announced to my mother that I was going to cook Thanksgiving dinner. And I went to the library and got this whole pile of books. I'd love to say it all turned out great. It didn't. But, sort of, from that point on, whenever there was serious cooking at home, I was the one who did it.

If I want popularity, I go to a chef's convention.