I have experienced a tremendous amount of personal and professional growth, and I feel incredibly lucky that I'm able to make a career out of doing the things that I love.

My family came from Ecuador.

Don't be afraid to adapt new ingredients into your own techniques, and traditional ingredients into new recipes.

As long as you remember what you love and why you love it, it will never be far from your heart - or your plate.

I think that a lot of us at home are iron chefs in their own right in that we have to come up with meals real quickly.

I studied cooking in Spain after college.

From the time I was 8 until now, I've been working. My Social Security is looking solid.

Chicago is a lot of my background as a chef.

I spent several years cooking on a line.

I'm a huge fan of burgers, and they're not my wife's favorite, so we don't cook them at home.

Being Ecuadorian is, I don't want to say it's tough but it's... something special to me.

When life throws a lemon at you, you throw it straight back at life and miss completely. That's my logic.

When you're following your energy and doing what you want all the time the distinction between work and play dissolves.

There ought to be a special place in heaven for coaches' wives.

If you're not messing up every now and then at practice, you're not doing anything above your ability to progress.

The ability to see our lives as stories rather than unrelated, random events increases the possibility for significant and purposeful action.

The very best thing you can do is to try to write a song that has some sort of impact.

After my first No. 1 song back in 2006, I worried I may never have another one.

The overall concept comes first and then that informs the product, the shoot and how we communicate it. Everything comes back to the concept. It all gets thought about at the same time.

I think it's wonderful to save the world, but you need to be part of the world, too.

I have never separated form and content. The photo should have a meaning. But my photos are also more or less well constructed. If they had false notes, they stayed on the contact sheet.