“If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them – wherever you go.”

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.

Cream rises. Excellence does have its rewards.

What’s the opposite of suck? Un-suck?

An ounce of sauce covers a multitude of sins.

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.

Don’t lie about it. You made a mistake. Admit it and move on. Just don’t do it again. Ever.

This, I knew, was the magic I had until now been only dimly and spitefully aware of.

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.

So you’re a little weird? Work it! A little different? OWN it! Better to be a nerd than one of the herd!

As we grow better, we meet better people.

It’s dedicating yourself to your craft. Spending thousands of hours in a studio learning how to write a song, learning how to play different chords, training yourself to sing. You know, to get better and better.

We can stand affliction better than we can prosperity, for in prosperity we forget God.

It’s not like I’m trying not to be worse! I’m trying to be gooder!

The untold secret of McDonald’s is that when you sell a restaurant to a franchisee, sales typically go up a lot because the franchisees do a much better job managing the store.

The will of God is never exactly what you expect it to be. It may seem to be much worse, but in the end it’s going to be a lot better and a lot bigger.

The people of the United States are one of the people I most admire in the world. The only thing I don’t understand is why a country that manages to do so well cannot do better in choosing its president.