My office in New York is overflowing with all kinds of cookbooks, and in New Orleans we have a huge culinary library. So yeah, I guess I'm a little bit obsessed.

My favorite Aspen memory is saving an upside-down cake that had exploded from the high altitude.

I grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts. My background was modest, and I worked at a Portuguese bakery in town.

A lot of parents ask me how to get kids to eat more vegetables. The first thing I say is that it starts from the top.

You gotta have good olive oil. You should have a cooking olive oil and you should have a finishing olive oil, like an extra-virgin olive oil.

Anything made with love, bam! -it's a beautiful meal.

Food is very representative of a city's culture. In order to really get to know a place and the people, you've got to eat the food.

If you don't follow your dream, who will?

Life just doesn't hand you things. You have to get out there and make things happen. that's the exciting part.

Spice is life. It depends upon what you like... have fun with it. Yes, food is serious, but you should have fun with it.

If kids can learn how to make a simple Bolognese sauce, they will never go hungry. It's pretty easy to cook pasta, but a good sauce is way more useful.

We like to think we're in control but we never are.

Love sticks around even when it has a lot to put up with.

Being half Jewish, we grew up with Christmas trees but had Jewish ornaments.

Editing is a natural extension of the collage making. It's actually one of the few areas that women were able to excel in in the film industry from the beginning.

Man peoples his current living space with a world of his own, crowded with the offspring of his fancies, desires, impulses, and passions.

Dead is the travel of all our travels.

When He tells us to love our enemies He gives, along with the command, the love itself.

In our inherent contradictions as humans, and in order to validate our own pain, we deny the pain of others. But it is in acknowledging the pain of others that we achieve fully our humanity.

I'm a parent, and I regulate what my kids listen to. I don't need the government to be the parent. If I'm a crappy parent, then I need the government involved.

I don't accept the status quo. I do accept Visa, MasterCard, or American Express.