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

Our movements through time and space seem somehow trivial compared to a heap of boiled meat in broth, the smell of saffron, garlic, fishbone, and Pernod.

Don’t touch my dick, don’t touch my knife.

I’ve long believed that good food, good eating, is all about risk.

I lurched away from the table after a few hours feeling like Elvis in Vegas – fat, drugged, and completely out of it.

Skills can be taught. Character you either have or you don’t have.

Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life—and travel—leaves marks on you.

You have to be a romantic to invest yourself, your money, and your time in cheese.

The way you make an omelet reveals your character.

Your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.

Frightened people become angry people – as history teaches us again and again.

Food had power. It could inspire, astonish, shock, excite, delight and impress. It had the power to please me .

People confuse me. Food doesn’t.

Luck is not a business model.

To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living.

I don’t have to agree with you to like you or respect you.

Perhaps omelet skills should be learned at the same time you learn to fuck.

When bright young minds can’t afford college, America pays the price.

As with narrow-necked bottles; the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring out.

If you don’t concentrate on what you are doing then the thing that you are doing is not what you are thinking.

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.

Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within.

We are all a part of every person we have ever met.

It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a deep truth.

The vanity of human life is like a river, constantly passing away, and yet constantly coming on.