I’m not trying to take New York by storm. I just want to sneak in there, keep my head down, batten down the hatches and cook.

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.

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

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

When I was younger we had a grape arbor, and my mom would go out and pick grapes and make grape jam in the sink – boil it, put it in jars, and give it away as gifts.

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.

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

You don’t come into cooking to get rich.

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.

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

To start with, I love New York… It’s a little bit of the whole world… In New York, the whole world comes to you.

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

I was performing in New York and my friends started to call me Gaga, they said I was very theatrical and they said, ‚You’re Gaga‘.

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

Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Do not overdo it.

From what I’ve heard, Paris did a little bit more prep work as far as making bike lanes and all of that stuff. They really did it properly, which New York is getting to little by little.

When you’re a chef, you graze. You never get a chance to sit down and eat. They don’t actually sit down and eat before you cook. So when I finish work, the first thing I’ll do, and especially when I’m in New York, I’ll go for a run. And I’ll run 10 or 15k on my – and I run to gain my appetite.

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

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

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

The vulgar boil, the learned roast, an egg.

I want you to feel happy and enjoy the theatre of my life the way that I do. No matter what happens with my music and wherever I go – that heart of that glamorous girl in New York will never be gone.

There are a lot of good women in New York.

My mom had Julia Child and ‚The Fannie Farmer Cookbook‘ on top of the refrigerator, and she had a small repertoire of French dishes.

Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.

Those people in New York are not gonna change me none.

Anyone who’s a chef, who loves food, ultimately knows that all that matters is: ‚Is it good? Does it give pleasure?‘

When you cook under pressure you trade perfection.

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

You know, from age 17 on, my paycheck was coming from cooking and working in kitchens.

When I’m back in New York – and this is a terrible thing to complain about – I eat a lot more really, really good food than perhaps I’d like to. So many of my friends are really good chefs. It’s kind of like being in the Mafia.

I cycled when I was at high school, then reconnected with bikes in New York in the late ’70s. It was a good way of getting around the clubs and galleries of the Lower East Side and Soho.

The glamour of it all! New York! America!

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.

A lot of the time when I write about the person that I love, I feel like I’m writing about New York.

People are really talkative in New York. Someone always comes up to me and says ‚Hi‘ during the day.

I am the most unselfish chef in Britain today.

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.

Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.

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

Eating is so intimate. It’s very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you want to cook for them, you’re inviting a person into your life.

I came to New York to be a fine artist – that was my ambition.

I love New York. I’m a guy for whom a New York accent is a comforting thing.

Would I swap what I have achieved as a cook if I could have been as successful as a footballer? Definitely.

Remember that before ‚Roe v. Wade‘ was decided, there were four states that allowed abortion in the first trimester if that’s what the woman sought: New York, Hawaii, California, Alaska. Other states were shifting. And people were fighting over this issue in state legislatures.

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.

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?‘

I’m very low-key. I don’t really blend in, so it’s difficult to go out in public. I like to do things that are kind of quiet, whether it’s a dinner at my house or a restaurant, or a movie night at home.

I’ve been my mom’s kitchen helper since I was a little kid.

Work aside, we come to New York for the possibility of interaction and inspiration.

The radiation left over from the Big Bang is the same as that in your microwave oven but very much less powerful. It would heat your pizza only to minus 271.3*C – not much good for defrosting the pizza, let alone cooking it.

Kitchens are hard environments and they form incredibly strong characters.

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.

For me, New York is comfortable, not strange.

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

My show ‚The Big House‘ was picked up; they flew me to New York. I’m about to step on stage to announce Kevin Hart’s ‚The Big House.‘ And a hand grabs my shoulder, ‚Kevin no, they just decided to cancel it.‘ It’s a serious smack-in-the-face business, and either you can take it, or you can’t.

My sisters like cooking at my place. It has a bit more room, and the food tastes a little bit better. A big pot of spaghetti and sauce, some warm French bread – works all the time. I think I’ve been eating pasta for 26 years.

I realized the other day that I’ve lived in New York longer than I’ve lived anywhere else. It’s amazing: I am a New Yorker. It’s strange; I never thought I would be.

My wife dresses to kill. She cooks the same way.

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

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