The best way to learn to cook is to do some serious eating.

Winter blues are cured every time with a potato gratin paired with a roast chicken.

Food is ever-changing and ever moving forward and getting more and more complex.

Creative risks will always outweigh technical mistakes.

Give yourself enough time to really learn how to cook.

The hardest thing for me is restraint.

The better the ingredients, the more farmers I can buy from, the closer I feel to the food I want to make that represents what I care about as a chef.

I woke up on May 15, 1991, the day of my Barnard graduation, and I said to myself, 'By the end of today you will decide what you want to do with the rest of your life.'

For me no good food is illuminated without acidity.

I don't show just anyone how to crust a sea bass. That's sacred information.

I bent my head over a stove in my early 20s and picked it up in my 30s.

Where there are problems, there are profits.

Children run everywhere for a reason--it's fun. Grown-ups can forget that sometimes.

What you keep for yourself, you lose. What you give away, you keep forever

You contain within yourself a unique combination of talents and abilities which, properly identified and applied, will enable you to achieve virtually any goal you can set for yourself.

Hope not ever to see heaven. I come to lead you to the other shore; into the eternal darkness; into fire and ice.

It is a terrible thing to look over your shoulder when you are trying to lead - and find no one there.

To err is nature, to rectify error is glory.

I used to say that whenever people heard my Southern accent, they always wanted to deduct 100 IQ points.

Ballet really taught me so much about the power of movement.

Why not start over because every promise made is not kept, why not start over so the American people can debate [the health care law] again?!