If you're good with a knife, you don't need your eyes.

I love to have battles of the wits with people that can dish fast and dirty - and it leads to problems occasionally, 'cause I can sound mean without attempting to be mean.

Culinary tradition is not always based on fact. Sometimes it's based on history, on habits that come out of a time when kitchens were fueled by charcoal.

Slicing a warm slab of bacon is a lot like giving a ferret a shave. No matter how careful you are, somebody's going to get hurt.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.

My college degree was in theater. But the real reason, if I have any success in that milieu, so to speak, is because I spent a lot of years directing, I spent a lot of years behind the camera

Laughing brains are more absorbent.

Cooking is an observation-based process that you can't do if you're so completely focused on a recipe.

So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand, it's bee backwash.

I had kicked around the idea for Good Eats when I was directing commercials.

A lot of food shows need only to tempt. Some food shows only need to inspire, to empower. And there are a lot of shows that do that.

Analysis gave me great freedom of emotions and fantastic confidence. I felt I had served my time as a puppet.

It's important to distinguish the soul from the spirit, or will, because the will or the heart or the spirit is the executive center of the self.

I remember all too well the premiere of Ecstasy when I watched my bare bottom bounce across the screen and my mother and father sat there in shock.

Solitude is a place where all is quiet - except the beating of your heart.

But I am not allowed to speak to foreigners and I am not allowed to leave the country. So I'm not so happy.

No wonder politicians love government schools. Where do you think the dumb masses come from that can be so easily led and manipulated?

The Italians . . . you can't find one who is honest.

Live by looking for things to do for other people.

The unflattering reviews are painful for short periods of time; the badly written ones are deeply, deeply insulting. That reviewer took no time to really read the book.

Worrying about the dunya is a darkness in the heart, while worrying about akhirah is a light in the heart.