The woman I am currently crazy about was a vegetarian for a year until I started dating her. As is the case with most vegetarians, she had never eaten properly prepared meat, only commercially packaged or otherwise abused flesh.

The only kind of restaurant I could imagine doing would be the extraordinarily snooty restaurant with three or four tables, and I would cook what I felt like cooking. And you could eat it or not.

Find people who think like you and stick with them. Make only music you are passionate about. Work only with people you like and trust. Don't sign anything.

Over the last thirty years or so, I have definitely become more enlightened about corners of the social spectrum that I had less exposure to as a young man. I've interacted with more poor people, more minorities and more sexual minorities. As you get more people from different backgrounds involved in your life, you get a broader perspective and you're less cavalier about your opinions.

Almost any decent cook will make food by eye and taste. Virtually all of my family cooked that way.

In heaven, after antipasti, the first course will be pasta.

Cooking is about presenting flavors and other aspects of food in a way that makes best use of them and makes an engaging, satisfying meal. Taste necessarily comes into it along with technique. Some ingredients require cooking, cleaning or otherwise denaturing them, some are fine as they are.