I wanted to write about what we were doing at the French Laundry, the recipes and the stories.

Cooking is not about convenience and it's not about shortcuts. Our hunger for the twenty-minute gourmet meal, for one-pot ease and prewashed, precut ingredients has severed our lifeline to the satisfactions of cooking. Take your time. Take a long time. Move slowly and deliberately and with great attention.

I like to drink young wines, wines which are robust and have a lot of forward fruit to them.

I can make dough in a machine faster than I can make it by hand, but I want to make it by hand, because I want to remember the way it feels. It's so important for me to make it by hand - whether it's a pasta dough or a pâte brisée. You become involved in it. You become personal with it. For me it's such a wonderful way to get satisfaction and gratification when I'm cooking.

You don't know when inspiration is going to come. But you have to be aware of what's going on around you, so that at any moment, when inspiration happens, you're ready for it and you interpret it.

In any restaurant of this caliber, the chefs are in the same position, building relationships.

Respect for food is respect for life, for who we are and what we do.