Pressure's healthy. It becomes stressful when you can't handle that. I mean, if you don't want to become pressurized in this environment, then don't be a chef.

Put your head down and work hard. Never wait for things to happen, make them happen for yourself through hard graft and not giving up.

I don't like looking back. I'm always constantly looking forward. I'm not the one to sort of sit and cry over spilt milk. I'm too busy looking for the next cow.

Chefs are nutters. They're all self-obsessed, delicate, dainty, insecure little souls and absolute psychopaths. Every last one of them.

Swearing is industry language. For as long as we're alive it's not going to change. You've got to be boisterous to get results.

If you want to become a great chef, you have to work with great chefs. And that's exactly what I did.

The minute you start compromising for the sake of massaging somebody's ego, that's it, game over.

Kitchens are hard environments and they form incredibly strong characters.

The problem with Yanks is they are wimps.

There's a bond among a kitchen staff, I think. You spend more time with your chef in the kitchen than you do with your own family.

Push your limit to the absolute extreme.

Never be afraid to ask. The worst you'll get is 'No' but maybe you'll get a 'Yes'.

Let us be French as the Americans are English.

Life isn't a matter of milestones, but of moments.

At 49, I can say something I never would have said when I was a player. I am a better person because of my failures and disgraces.

I like fictional stories - like, things that never happened but the seed of it starts as real.

The Don Quixote of one generation may live to hear himself called the savior of society by the next.

Once I've designed something, I immediately move on to the next thing.

Silence is, after all, the context for the deepest appreciation of art: the only important evaluations are finally, personal, interior ones.

We have to claim anarchy and realize that systems have a life of their own that is anti-humanist. There is definitely an anti-humanist tendency in all systems.

The gods, after all, are only human, and once their rage has been placated they are perfectly capable of acts of mercy and grace.