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

For most of my life I let women do the driving and was happy to let them.

Idleness is the parent of psychology.

Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.

I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.

With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

People always say when they meet me that I’m not what they expect. I assume they think I’m this super dark and depressing guy, but I like to channel all of those emotions into my work.

People tend to think that because I’m a performer and I don’t go to a regular high school that I haven’t personally been affected by bullies. But it’s actually quite the contrary.

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.

I’ve had sleep paralysis.

In the public eye, girls and women with strong perspectives are hated. If you’re a girl with an opinion, people just hate you. There are still people who are afraid of successful women, and that’s so lame.

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

There’s very little advice in men’s magazines, because men don’t think there’s a lot they don’t know. Women do. Women want to learn. Men think, ‚I know what I’m doing, just show me somebody naked.‘

If you keep feeling a point that has been sharpened, the point cannot long preserve its sharpness.

I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.

There is a level of snobbery and fickleness in L.A.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

Life’s too short to deal with other people’s insecurities.

For me, there have been times when an action movie, even a ‚Tomb Raider,‘ has helped me get out of myself and be physical again. It’s like therapy.

I have known people who are working class or craftsmen, who happen to be more intellectual than professors.

The vulgar boil, the learned roast, an egg.

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

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.

Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.

I don’t know how to function without music. When I’m not making it, I’m listening to it. It gives me courage and takes care of my mind.

It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there’s nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.

Meditation helps me to calm down.

The deferring of anger is the best antidote to anger.

Funny thing is that the poorer people are, the more generous they seem to be.

Fear makes us feel our humanity.

Love is a serious mental disease.

Mothers and daughters generally have fairly complex relationships, and ours was made much more so by Mother’s illness. She had Parkinson’s disease, which was not diagnosed for a long time… All that made me very self-protective, because for one thing, I didn’t want to get trapped.

As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.

For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind.

I read so much stuff that black women say, especially about my relationship. ‚Oh, he left his black wife to go be with some exotic chick.‘ First of all, my girl is black: she’s Jamaican.

I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.

The greatest remedy for anger is delay.

I think that’s why I put my energy into making music. That’s how I get my thoughts out, instead of being crazy all the time.

Mind over mattress.

The story with anorexic girls – nobody works with anorexic girls. That has nothing to do with fashion.

I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.

Ain’t nothing like a good cry.

All fat women look the same; they all look 42.

People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on.

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

If it’s stress of things that we cannot control, what you have to do is you mitigate that stress as much as possible. You’ve planned, you’ve trained, you’ve done everything you can in your power to mitigate the stress that’s facing you. And then after that, there’s nothing you can do. So, you have to let that one go.

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

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.

I think every chef, not just in America, but across the world, has a double-edged sword – two jackets, one that’s driven, a self-confessed perfectionist, thoroughbred, hate incompetence and switch off the stove, take off the jacket and become a family man.

I think it’s funny to be delicate with subjects that are explosive.

No, I’m not anguished and tormented.

The Kobe craze really annoyed me. Most of the practitioners had no real understanding of the product and were abusing it and exploiting it in terrible and ridiculous ways. Kobe beef should not be used in a hamburger. It’s completely pointless.

If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.

It’s very hard when you eat out every day for a living, and a new restaurant comes along and you haven’t got that same vigour that you had 10 years ago.

I can live for two months on a good compliment.

I like to let things breathe.

Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.

I have lost my mental faculties but am perfectly well.

Total relaxation is the secret to enjoying sitting meditation. I sit with my spine upright, but not rigid; and I relax all the muscles in my body.

Give yourself more opportunities for privacy, when you are not bombarded with duties and obligations. Privacy is not a rejection of those you love; it is your deserved respite for recharging your batteries.