You can't do traditional work at a modern pace. Traditional work has traditional rhythms. You need calm. You can be busy, but you must remain calm.

Food made by hand is an act of defiance and runs contrary to everything in our modernity. Find it; eat it; it will go. It has been around for millennia. Now it is evanescent, like a season.

In normal life, 'simplicity' is synonymous with 'easy to do,' but when a chef uses the word, it means 'takes a lifetime to learn.'

The most important knowledge is understanding what you can't do.

The family is the essential presence, the thing that never leaves you, even if you find you have to leave it.

The crowd is not us. It never is.

In normal life, "simplicity" is synonymous with "easy to do, " but when a chef uses the word, it means "takes a lifetime to learn.

The first glimpse I had of what Mario Batali's friends had described to me as the 'myth of Mario' was on a cold Saturday night in January 2002, when I invited him to a birthday dinner.

Strong enough to make holes in the rock are tiny drops of water that persist to fall. Persistence is the attitude that breaks down mountains one rock at a time!

Unrest of spirit is a mark of life.

I still like to go to record stores, I like to just wander around and I'll buy whatever catches my attention.

But men are less used to the idea of being raped than women are, and it strikes them with a fresh horror. With women, that horror comes right along with the female genitals.

The majority of my work is from life. I spend most fine days from May to October painting outside.

You can only ask to be respected if you respect yourself.

I think the truth is black-and-white .

Every generation will be challenged morally once in their life about its government, and they will have to say where they stand.

When you have been close to death it makes you think about life.

Voyaging great distances -- through forests, from island to island, across plains and into the mountains -- is all about finding ourselves.