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

We begin to see, therefore, the importance of selecting our environment with the greatest of care, because environment is the mental feeding ground out of which the food that goes into our minds is extracted.

There are going to be good days and bad days. Bottom line.

It’s rare for anyone to value the opinions of a teenage girl.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.

When you get into your car, shut the door and be there for just half a minute. Breathe, feel the energy inside your body, look around at the sky, the trees. The mind might tell you, ‚I don’t have time.‘ But that’s the mind talking to you. Even the busiest person has time for 30 seconds of space.

Silence speaks so much louder than screaming tantrums. Never give anyone an excuse to say that you’re crazy.

Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent, adolescent boy; Canada is like an intelligent, 35-year-old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson. It comes right up to you and laughs very hard in your face in a highly threatening and engaging manner.

Fear makes us feel our humanity.

Nothing becomes so offensive so quickly as grief. When fresh it finds someone to console it, but when it becomes chronic, it is ridiculed, and rightly.

I do suffer from depression, I suppose. Which isn’t that unusual. You know, a lot of people do.

The Americans at heart are a pure and noble people; things to them are in black and white. It’s either ‚rawk‘ or it’s not. We Brits putter around in the grey area.

Anger dwells only in the bosom of fools.

Jiu Jitsu is a great workout both mentally and physically. You want to be strong for it and flexible for it.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.

We’re African-American and we work together as a family, so people assume we’re like the Jacksons. But I didn’t have parents using me to get out of a bad situation.

By imposing too great a responsibility, or rather, all responsibility, on yourself, you crush yourself.

It doesn’t take much to make me angry.

I’m not asking any of you to make drastic changes to every single one of your recipes or to totally change the way you do business. But what I am asking is that you consider reformulating your menu in pragmatic and incremental ways to create healthier versions of the foods that we all love.

Our brains are either our greatest assets or our greatest liabilities.

Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It’s a black wall. It’s a thief.

The French are so into themselves that they don’t even notice you.

I’m interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.

The mind of America is seized by a fatal dry rot – and it’s only a question of time before all that the mind controls will run amuck in a frenzy of stupid, impotent fear.

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.

I used to let other people’s struggles affect my happiness. If they weren’t happy, there was no way I was going to be happy. The opposite was also true: If I wasn’t happy, I didn’t want anyone around me to be happy.

People won’t have time for you if you are always angry or complaining.

We have an epidemic of insecure people in our society today.

Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.

I don’t know how to live good. I only know how to suffer.

A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.

I don’t carry the burden of the past or the madness of the future. I live in the present.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

I go through a lot of depression, and I know other people do, too, but I have an outlet that so many people don’t. If you have that inside of you and can’t get it out, what do you do?

Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.

To live is to think.

Love is a serious mental disease.

Be a force of love as often as you can and turn away negative thoughts whenever you feel them surface.

We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.

Well, there are some things that I just can’t get out of my head, and they start to annoy me after a while. Sometimes they’re of my own creation, as well – and they’re just as annoying. It’s not only other people’s ear worms that bug me, it’s my own, as well.

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.

People take the little bit of information they’re fed, and they draw a picture of who you are. Most of the time, it’s wrong.

Your emotions are very unstable and should never be the foundation for direction in your life.

If we weren’t all crazy, we’d just go insane.

A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.

Idleness is the parent of psychology.

Sure I believe in God and the Devil, but they don’t have to have pitchforks and a long white beard.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

Man is always looking for someone to boast to; woman is always looking for a shoulder to put her head on.

Meditation is not following any system; it is not constant repetition and imitation. Meditation is not concentration.

I don’t worry about stress. I create it.

Happiness is the cessation of suffering.

We humans have lost the wisdom of genuinely resting and relaxing. We worry too much. We don’t allow our bodies to heal, and we don’t allow our minds and hearts to heal.

I’ve 20,000 hours of clinical practice; you’re not naive after the first few thousand. I’ve helped people deal with things that most people can’t imagine.

As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.

I’m a bookworm. I know with my physical appearance that I don’t look like the typical reader. I’m in Barnes & Noble all the time, and you can look at people that look like they are supposed to be in there. I am in there, pants sagging, hat backwards.

I must confess that I lead a miserable life. For almost two years, I have ceased to attend any social functions, just because I find it impossible to say to people, ‚I am deaf.‘ If I had any other profession, I might be able to cope with my infirmity; but in my profession, it is a terrible handicap.