Creative risks will always outweigh technical mistakes.

Winter blues are cured every time with a potato gratin paired with a roast chicken.

The best way to learn to cook is to do some serious eating.

Food is ever-changing and ever moving forward and getting more and more complex.

Give yourself enough time to really learn how to cook.

The hardest thing for me is restraint.

The better the ingredients, the more farmers I can buy from, the closer I feel to the food I want to make that represents what I care about as a chef.

I woke up on May 15, 1991, the day of my Barnard graduation, and I said to myself, 'By the end of today you will decide what you want to do with the rest of your life.'

For me no good food is illuminated without acidity.

I don't show just anyone how to crust a sea bass. That's sacred information.

I bent my head over a stove in my early 20s and picked it up in my 30s.

There are two kinds of fears: rational and irrational- or in simpler terms, fears that make sense and fears that don't.

I'll share my life with you. But, not my doughnuts.

I get on Twitter, one of my routines during the day, if I'm home is, I wake up, get a cup of coffee, turn on the Weather Channel and I'll look at what people are saying to me on Twitter on my phone.

Writing means revealing oneself to excess.

All geologic history is full of the beginning and the ends of species-of their first and last days; but it exhibits no genealogies of development.

Of all peoples the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life best.

A gentle mixture of furniture expresses life and continuity but it must be a judicious mixture that flows and mixes well. It is a bit like mixing a salade. (I am better at room than salads).

Losing strengthens you. It reveals your weaknesses so you can fix them

I have a penchant for playing God's clowns. Actually, I played Nijinsky once, and he used to call himself God's clown.

Mystical additions and subtractions always come out the way you want.