“Few things are more beautiful to me than a bunch of thuggish, heavily tattooed line cooks moving around each other like ballerinas on a busy Saturday night.”

Writing anything is a treason of sorts.

Only desperation can account for what the Chinese do in the name of ‘medicine.’

Good food is very often, even most often, simple food.

Without new ideas, success can become stale.

Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.

The idea of America is a mutt-culture, isn’t it? Who the hell is America if not everybody else?

I had field experience, a vocabulary, and a criminal mind. I was a danger to myself and others.

I’m not going anywhere. I hope. It’s been an adventure. We took some casualties over the years. Things got broken. Things got lost. But I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you.

I learned to recognize failure.

I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once.

That without experimentation, a willingness to ask questions and try new things, we shall surely become static, repetitive, moribund.

And chicken is boring. Chefs see it as a menu item for people who don’t know what they want to eat.

Selling out is getting a job.

Good food and good eating are about risk.

Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one’s life.

Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle.

She was a beautiful savage.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,-that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

The pretty girl is always right.

It’s nice to be one of the most beautiful people.

To grow in unconditional love and in beauty is spirituality.

Honesty has a beautiful and refreshing simplicity about it. No ulterior motives. No hidden meanings. An absence of hypocrisy, duplicity, political games, and verbal superficiality. As honesty and real integrity characterize our lives, there will be no need to manipulate others.

The stronger the winds, the deeper the roots, and the longer the winds, the more beautiful the tree.