Lifes too short to just breeze on by.

Contemporary ramen is totally different than what most Americans think ramen should be. Ramen is not one thing; there are many, many different types.

We're hoping to succeed; we're okay with failure. We just don't want to land in between.

Food, to me, is always about cooking and eating with those you love and care for.

Rage or fear... It oscillates. Rage I need to motivate me to try things that I can't ordinarily do - as I'm a lazy man. Fear - to keep pushing harder so we don't lose what we've accomplished.

Cooking and gardening involve so many disciplines: math, chemistry, reading, history.

To eat well, I always disagree with critics who say that all restaurants should be fine dining. You can get a Michelin star if you serve the best hamburger in the world.

I find that there are a lot of similarities between French and Japanese food. I think they're two countries that have really systemized their cuisine and codified it.

I constantly think I'm a fraud, that this success is not warranted or justified.

The livelihood of the restaurant is dependent upon getting the word out. There's so much more competition. You can do an event every week and not cook at all.

You can't go into the chef's office of any serious kitchen and not see a copy of Larousse. A must-have for professional and home cooks alike.

Break the rules not because you don’t know better, but because you know them too well

We have no peace because we have forgotten that we all came from the same mother. We are brothers and sisters.

How you start your day lays out how well you live it.

If you have a good experience in a restaurant, you tell 2 people. If you have a bad experience, you tell 10 people.

I see the winos talking to themselves and I can understand.

I did not know it then, but Frida had already become the most important fact in my life. And would continue to be, up to the moment she died, 27 years later.

I decided a long time ago but sometimes it takes you 40 years to get around to doing something - and that's the truthful answer.

Not only Freud but artists and writers were also interested in the unconscious. It was medicine that made the first steps toward modernity.

America has become numb to violence because it just drowns in it, day in and day out.

It's not that you aren't likable. On the contrary. You are. It's just that one wonders if you haven't made a career out of being so likable.