For me, the end of childhood came when the number of candles on my birthday cake no longer reflected my age, around 19 or 20. From then on, each candle came to represent an entire decade.

Pasta with melted cheese is the one thing I could eat over and over again.

Brunch, for me, is an extended breakfast that should be enjoyed whenever you have time properly to engage in cooking and eating.

A well-made salad must have a certain uniformity; it should make perfect sense for those ingredients to share a bowl.

The combination of olive oil, garlic and lemon juice lifts the spirits in winter.

Breakfast is always the best time for something juicy, sweet and fresh - it just feels like the right way to open the day. There's no right way, though, when it comes to choosing the fruit.

Mothers and grandmothers: these are the people that I admire most, not so much chefs.

Just-poached vegetables show off their natural attributes, and taste fresh and light in a way you never get with roasting or frying.

Date syrup is a natural sweetener that has wonderful richness and treacly depth; I drizzle it over semolina porridge.

The way to entice people into cooking is to cook delicious things.

Some heat, some spice and plenty of citrus are the building blocks of many north African fish dishes.

It does not manifest so that you can believe in it. You believe in it so that it can manifest.

You win in life when you are able to convert all your disappearing time or the disappearing life into products.

Bad writing, it is easily verified, has never kept scholarship from being published.

A hero is a man who does what he can.

I always try to set a positive example for my generation and promote confidence.

My views on everything from welfare to a balanced budget to affirmative action can be traced to what Buddy and Helen Watts taught me as a young boy growing up poor but proud in Eufaula.

Isn’t it wonderful the way the world holds both the deeply serious, and the unexpectedly mirthful?

I'm passionate about what I do. I'd be naive to be passive.

I think there is a degree of speculation that is satisfied the climate is changing.

The assailant is often in the right; that the assailed is always.