Every time I open a new restaurant, I wake up in the middle of the night moaning about bread and water. I dream I am in the middle of the dining room, and I am panicked.

Pasta is the one food I can't live without. It's the food I eat to fuel my running.

Carbs - especially pasta - are the fuel my body needs to maintain an athletic lifestyle.

The pressure, the heat, the almost impossibly fast pace at which you need work - this is the reality of working in the culinary industry. This is what professional chefs do night after night.

I eat a lot of whole grains for breakfast, a lot of dried fruit. And my big thing is pasta. I do a lot of simple pasta, with great ingredients.

Working in a restaurant means being part of a family, albeit usually a slightly dysfunctional one. Nothing is accomplished independently.

The best pastas are cut with bronze dies that give them a rough texture and allow the sauce to cling.

At home, I make a large batch of tomato sauce and freeze it in meal-size portions in freezer bags.

Aside from hospitality and delicious food, our [restaurateurs'] job is to entertain people. Restaurants should make people feel special, excited and fulfilled.

Most people who open restaurants will fail, because they lack the fundamental understanding of restaurant math. Either they think they're superstar cooks or they think they're superstar hosts.

No matter what it is you are cooking, buy the best ingredients you can afford. I don't care if it's a simple salad or Beef Wellington. A quality product stands alone and won't need any dressing up.

How small a thought it takes to fill a life.

Engage the enemy more closely.

Contemporaries of Alexander Hamilton noticed "his conspicuous sense of self-possession, his unique combination of serenity and energy.

I had a dream that I knew it all…but then I woke up and appreciated the fact that I didn’t know everything because then there would be nothing left to discover in life.

But where do we come up with this notion of a woman in which the less space you take up, the more you're worth?

My paternal grandmother gave me the courage to investigate things and not take things at face value or judge people by what I first imagine them to be.

Normality wasn't normal. It couldn't be. If normality were normal, everybody could leave it alone. They could sit back and let normality manifest itself.

Dreams are manifestations of identities.

The best music of any era lasts well, I think.

The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it.