Cooking is an act of love, a gift, a way of sharing with others the little secrets -- 'piccoli segreti' -- that are simmering on the burners.

Without my mother's ambition, her drive, I doubt that on my own I would have pushed myself out of Pozzuoli and into the frightening world that was faraway Rome.

Mistakes are the price of an interesting life.

I'm not talking so much about sex - after you've seen sex in a picture, what else can happen - but violence is very bad. People think these are things you are allowed to do. I think they should be forbidden.

I think what you have inside reflects very much in your face, in your expression. If you can find a kind of equilibrium in life, you never really get old, because you have that kind of ingenuity and innocence inside that gives you that brightness and that glint in your eye that generally, getting older, you lose.

My mother was so beautiful, she really was a a wonderful person. Always walking like a queen. Like she owned the world. Maybe I took something from her.

You must all, somewhere deep in your hearts, believe that you have a special beauty that is like no other and that is so valuable that you must not abandon it. Indeed, you must learn to cherish it.