The teaching thing, the one where I have to impart my knowledge, is probably what comes the least naturally to me because I'm an absorber of things.

Pasta with melted cheese is the one thing I could eat over and over again.

Brunch, for me, is an extended breakfast that should be enjoyed whenever you have time properly to engage in cooking and eating.

A well-made salad must have a certain uniformity; it should make perfect sense for those ingredients to share a bowl.

The combination of olive oil, garlic and lemon juice lifts the spirits in winter.

Breakfast is always the best time for something juicy, sweet and fresh - it just feels like the right way to open the day. There's no right way, though, when it comes to choosing the fruit.

Mothers and grandmothers: these are the people that I admire most, not so much chefs.

Just-poached vegetables show off their natural attributes, and taste fresh and light in a way you never get with roasting or frying.

Date syrup is a natural sweetener that has wonderful richness and treacly depth; I drizzle it over semolina porridge.

The way to entice people into cooking is to cook delicious things.

For me, the end of childhood came when the number of candles on my birthday cake no longer reflected my age, around 19 or 20. From then on, each candle came to represent an entire decade.

You don't know how you got there or how it's going to end, but how you deal when you´re in it is what makes you a man

Sometimes just breathing is enough.

I'm very much a word person, so that's why typography for me is the obvious extension. It just makes my words visible.

And a diplomatist is one who lets the other fellow think he's getting his way, while all the time he's having his own. It never does any special harm to let people have their way with their mouths.

Meditation should be the foremost technology of the 21st century; the technology of reprogramming the non-spatial universal computer.

I like the powerful story, the excellent performances the beautiful cinematography and the vision of the "The Piano".

I am overwhelmed by the beautiful disorder of poetry, the eternal virginity of words.

The choices of one shape the futures of all.

I think you can't do any action without in some way paying homage to John Woo. He's the guy who just invented that sort of next level of poetic nasty action.

Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.