“Music is one of those things that is constantly going in my head all the time. It's sort of like the evolution and creation of doing food, or my philosophy about wine. It's always beating in my hea...”

“My family... always had the value of the family table and these cultural influences of growing up.”

“My philosophy from day one is that I can sleep better at night if I can improve an individual's knowledge about food and wine, and do it on a daily basis.”

“You know, for 300 years it's been kind of the same. There are restaurants in New Orleans that the menu hasn't changed in 125 years, so how is one going to change or evolve the food?”

“If you stand in a wheat field at this time of year, a few weeks from harvest, it's not hard to imagine you're looking at something out of mythology: all this golden sunlight brought down to earth, ...”

“You have come nearer to mastering a good many aspects of cooking than anyone except a handful of great chefs, and some day it will pay off. I know it will. You will just have to go on working, and ...”

“I turned from my window. Suddenly it seemed odd for my neighbors on both sides to have visitors while I had none. For the first time, I felt lonely at 'Sconset."Let's cook," Frannie said energetica...”

“There comes a time in your life when you have to choose between giving up and staying strong, when situations will try to predict your fate, when friends will depart from you and your echo will be ...”

“Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing timesalthough such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have wor...”

“Challenges in life can either enrich you or poison you. You are the one who decides.”

“I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa”

“At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.”

“I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”