No matter what it is you are cooking, buy the best ingredients you can afford. I don't care if it's a simple salad or Beef Wellington. A quality product stands alone and won't need any dressing up.

Pasta is the one food I can't live without. It's the food I eat to fuel my running.

Carbs - especially pasta - are the fuel my body needs to maintain an athletic lifestyle.

The pressure, the heat, the almost impossibly fast pace at which you need work - this is the reality of working in the culinary industry. This is what professional chefs do night after night.

I eat a lot of whole grains for breakfast, a lot of dried fruit. And my big thing is pasta. I do a lot of simple pasta, with great ingredients.

Working in a restaurant means being part of a family, albeit usually a slightly dysfunctional one. Nothing is accomplished independently.

The best pastas are cut with bronze dies that give them a rough texture and allow the sauce to cling.

At home, I make a large batch of tomato sauce and freeze it in meal-size portions in freezer bags.

Aside from hospitality and delicious food, our [restaurateurs'] job is to entertain people. Restaurants should make people feel special, excited and fulfilled.

Most people who open restaurants will fail, because they lack the fundamental understanding of restaurant math. Either they think they're superstar cooks or they think they're superstar hosts.

America has been conditioned to think of pasta as the never-ending pasta bowl and Olive Garden.

The solid earth sways like the treacherous sea beneath the feet of men and spirits alike when the innocent are slain in the name of law, and their wrongs are undone by slandering the pure of heart.

I seek … the means to fight injustice. To turn fear against those who prey on the fearful.

What if desire wasn't an urge to be tamed, but a beacon of truth to be followed?

Worry is the interest paid by those who borrow trouble.

Money cannot purchase joy. It buys temporary distractions.

I have no intention of sharing my authority.

When the people you've already worked with are very talented and you know what they can do, if you think of a character that happens to be perfect for them, then you make it happen.

At last he came to a door, with these words in glowing emeralds: THE END OF THE WORLD He did not hesitate. He opened the door and stepped through.

Our first mistake is the belief that the circumstance gives the joy which we give to the circumstance.

You're working for me cut out the attitude.