If you want to become a great chef, you have to work with great chefs. And that’s exactly what I did.

Before finding music, I didn’t have too many aspirations. I wanted to hang out, make a little money from whatever I had to do.

I’m just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.

I think I should learn French and be a better cook – basic, really good life stuff.

I am a chef who happens to appear on the telly, that’s it.

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.

The woman who can create her own job is the woman who will win fame and fortune.

The best way a mentor can prepare another leader is to expose him or her to other great people.

It’d be stupid for me to sit here and say that there aren’t kids who look up to me, but my responsibility is not to them. I’m not a baby sitter.

While still working for others, your goal at some point must be to carve out little areas that you can operate on your own, cultivating entrepreneurial skills.

Who bothers to cook TV dinners? I suck them frozen.

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.

I like chicken a lot because chicken is generous – that is to say, it’s obedient. It will do whatever you tell it to do.

Didn’t get promoted? Good. More time to get better.

In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.

Writing’s just as natural to me as getting up and cooking breakfast.

When I’m home, I spend Sunday with my husband. If we’re not cooking, we travel around in our camper, stop at fast-food restaurants, and picnic. We love that stuff that will harden your arteries in a hurry.

I wasn’t that great a chef, and I don’t think I’m that great a writer.

There’s a bond among a kitchen staff, I think. You spend more time with your chef in the kitchen than you do with your own family.

An employer of mine back in the ’80s was kind enough to take me on after a rough patch, and it made a big difference in my life that I knew I was the sort of person who showed up on time. It’s a basic tell of character.

I don’t need a successor, only willing hands to accept the torch for a new generation.

When you’re older you want to learn from other people.

Every three months, I’ll say, ‚Honey, I think I should learn how to cook‘.

Every chef I know, their cholesterol is through the roof. And mine’s not so great.

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

I want to try something different in Hollywood, to tell the audience I am not just an actor star – I am an actor, too.

I have loved to cook since I was a child in my mother’s kitchen. If I don’t have time to cook, I’ll just read a cookbook.

I want people to follow their dreams, yes… but I’m not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers… I want to show them that there’s so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.

I’m just wanting to make the proper breakfast and keep the house. That’s my passion. At the request of my kids, I’m taking cooking classes. As I go to sleep at night, I think, ‚Did I do a great job as a mom, or was that an average day?‘

You have to look for teachers. If you want to be a mechanic, go hang out with mechanics.

I still love football, though, and I think cooking is like football. It’s not a job, it’s a passion. When you become good at it, it’s a dream job and financially you need never to worry. Ever.

Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I’m taking with me when I go.

My dinners at home are startlingly simple. Every night, I stop at the market near my hotel and pick up a steak, lamb chops or some liver, which I broil in the electric oven in my room. I usually eat four or five raw carrots with my meat, and that is all. I must be part rabbit; I never get bored with raw carrots.

The goal for me is always to have the opportunity to work in different genres. This is a great and exciting time in my career, where I can have the opportunity to work in different genres, and also I recognize there’s not a lot of actors who have that opportunity and I’m grateful for it.

If you don’t let people flourish in their jobs, why are they going to stay?

I first met Bev Shea while in Chicago when he was on Moody Radio. As a young man starting my ministry, I asked Bev if he would join me. He said yes, and for over 60 years we had the privilege of ministering together across the country and around the world.

Older and wiser voices can help you find the right path, if you are only willing to listen.

I won’t have to do any major changes to continue my career a long way, hopefully. Just hopefully stay healthy and be able to help a team out as I go through and still play at a pretty high level.

Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish – too much handling will spoil it.

Those places I don’t understand, just doing bad food. It takes some doing. Making good pasta is so much easier than making bad stuff. It actually takes quite an effort to make poor linguine pomodora.

If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.

Every bit of me is devoted to love and art. And I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who feel just like I felt when I was younger. I just felt like a freak. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m trying to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can make their own space in the world.

Another suggestion is to cook a meal, maybe not every night, but a couple more times a week than you usually do. That way you have leftovers, and you take your lunch to work.

I feel that if Jacques Pepin shows you how to make an omelet, the matter is pretty much settled. That’s God talking.

Barbecue may not be the road to world peace, but it’s a start.

Working with a guy like Ice Cube on ‚Ride Along,‘ you learn so much. He’s a guy who produces, writes, and directs, so you watch and learn and ask questions. As you go, you learn and figure out what you should and shouldn’t do. I do nothing but soak up information.

When I figured out how to work my grill, it was quite a moment. I discovered that summer is a completely different experience when you know how to grill.

A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.

When you cook under pressure you trade perfection.

Cooking is about passion, so it may look slightly temperamental in a way that it’s too assertive to the naked eye.

I am the most unselfish chef in Britain today.

You don’t come into cooking to get rich.

No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.

I’ve taken so many kids out of Pittsburgh and onto the great white way in New York City right into a Broadway show.

Talking to a player helps, but in our sport the majority of learning happens from watching another player. You pick up things like being punctual, being nice to everyone, making sure you give your 100 per cent even in training.

I got a chance to work with Stallone and De Niro – pretty much sums it up for me. You can tell where you’re going in your career by the company you keep.

Over the years, all my coaches and my teammates have contributed a lot to shape my career. I can never forget their contribution and help.

Cooking certain dishes, like roast pork, reminds me of my mother.

There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good.

‚Kitchen Confidential‘ wasn’t a cautionary or an expose. I wrote it as an entertainment for New York tri-state area line cooks and restaurant lifers, basically; I had no expectation that it would move as far west as Philadelphia.

As a soccer player, I wanted an FA Cup winner’s medal. As an actor you want an Oscar. As a chef it’s three-Michelin’s stars, there’s no greater than that. So pushing yourself to the extreme creates a lot of pressure and a lot of excitement, and more importantly, it shows on the plate.