I like doing food as a focal point on my table. It is not like going out and buying flowers or candles, which are expensive.

Baking cookies is comforting, and cookies are the sweetest little bit of comfort food. They are very bite-sized and personal.

You don't need to be born with a silver spoon to reach for the brass ring

Sure, you can mix the flour, baking soda, salt, shortening, and the whole nine yards, but why wouldn't you just pull out a box of Bisquick?

One of the things I do in my cookbooks is I will do a conversion from outdoor to indoor grilling so you can do it year-round.

Instead of doing cinnamon, nutmeg, and all those baking spices I'll have one spice that's for sweets, and that's pumpkin pie spice.

As a kid, I thought John Denver was the perfect Prince Charming.

Baking is how you start kids at cooking in the kitchen. It's fun whether it's baking bread or cookies. With baking, you have to be exact when it comes to ingredients.

Seventy percent store-bought, ready-made plus 30 percent fresh allows you to take 100 percent of the credit.

Baking is how you start kids at cooking in the kitchen.

It's really easy to figure out why I love what I love, the holidays and food. I know the difference between having them and not having them.

Fall makes me think that if I fail horribly at this art thing, and then fail horribly with this writing thing, I'll go run a pumpkin patch.

The most classic horror tale of this latter type is the Old Testament story of Job, who becomes human Astro-Turf in a kind of spiritual Superbowl between God and Satan.

Allow me to remove my headphones to listen to your bullshit.

Rumor ... often is fathered and mothered by false reports.

I dress for women and I undress for men.

One of the happiest days of my life is when I made five or six hundred pesos from a crop of watermelons I raise all on my own.

My businesses are usually built around challenging conventional wisdom, so I tend to gain by taking the other side. It's been very profitable and entertaining for me

We are dangerous when we are not conscious of our responsibility for how we behave, think, and feel.

I taught writing classes at the University of Pennsylvania for a number of years and I realized that all you can do is encourage people and give them assignments and hope they will write them.

The difference between me and David Haye is that I want to be a fighter, he hates it, but he has to fight, remember that.