‚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.

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.

Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone – a memory.

Well, everyone likes movies when they’re a little kid.

I’m very type-A, and many things in my life are about control and domination, but eating should be a submissive experience, where you let down your guard and enjoy the ride.

Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.

I love to go to the zoo. But not on Sunday. I don’t like to see the people making fun of the animals, when it should be the other way around.

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

There are a lot of good women in New York.

You can always think of something like the Xbox 360 as a super set-top box that can do everything the set-top box does, but then have the graphics to do the games as well.

Even in New York, there are a lot of very attractive girls pedaling around. That just happens to be one of the nice sights in our city, seeing a young woman on a bike.

Are we simply waving farewell to the days when some of the most interesting thinking in Europe and America came to us from our fiction film-makers? BBC2, which once introduced and showed great films, now shows none.

Man, I really like Vegas.

I like Cardi B!

‚Best Man Holiday‘ was a very successful film.

The vulgar boil, the learned roast, an egg.

If I’m in the ‚hood, I like Chef Creole’s Haitian rice and stewed chicken.

Is there a sharper commentary on American culture and the world than The Simpsons?

Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I’d sit all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it. I loved anything that moved up there and I didn’t miss anything that happened and there was no popcorn either.

I have more friends in New York than Paris.

I enjoy driving on the sim, doing stuff like that, staying at home.

I saw MotoGP on TV first, before I saw F1 and other types of car racing. It’s what I got more into. It was cool, there was good, exciting racing.

When I do stand-up shows at colleges, girls will talk to me after the show, and that always feels good. I like talking to them.

Since childhood, I’ve been a clown. I’ve always liked being very funny or trying to make people laugh. It’s my original self.

My music is a luxury.

The movie business is a big gamble.

You are always hoping that movie audiences are interested in characters and interested in story values rather than just mindless special effects. But you never know.

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

I don’t get bored.

Human beings need stories, and we’re looking for them in all kinds of places; whether it’s television, whether it’s comic books or movies, radio plays, whatever form, people are hungry for stories.

There’s only one thing that can kill the movies, and that’s education.

I don’t know how the rap game is, because I’m a fan of reality, and the rap game’s entertainment.

I love Chris Brown. He’s a superstar. He’s one of the best singers out there.

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

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.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

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

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

I don’t want people at my shows to come out and say, ‚I just saw a cool show.‘ I want them to say, ‚I had fun at the show.‘ I want it to be a collaborative thing and be part of the audience and have them be part of me. I try to interact with everyone there and have them be equal to me because they are.

Hunger is the best pickle.

Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It’s inseparable from those from the get-go.

The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.

The sound and music are 50% of the entertainment in a movie.

When you cook under pressure you trade perfection.

I have kind of a funny relationship with movies. I don’t have to see the whole movie to get an impression of it or to let it have an influence on me.

I love eating chocolate cake and ice cream after a show. I almost justify it in my mind as, ‚You were a good boy onstage and you did your show, so now you can have some cake and ice cream.‘

Ice-cream is exquisite – what a pity it isn’t illegal.

I want to play a fireman and a spy. I want to learn special effects.

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

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 make pop culture.

And I try to give the best bang for the buck. I love performing more than anything else.

It’s really fun to be on stage in front of people.

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

When I was writing ‚Kitchen Confidential,‘ I was in my 40s, I had never paid rent on time, I was 10 years behind on my taxes, I had never owned my own furniture or a car.

Wherever I go, as long as I get a hot vegetable dish, I am okay. If I am in Gujarat, I have Gujarati food. If it’s Shillong, it’s northeastern.

To the audience, it’s like I’m changing the subject every five seconds, but to me, my show’s almost like a 90-minute song that I know exactly. I wrote every note, and I know exactly where everything is.

I did this book ‚Harvest for Hope,‘ and I learned so much about food. And one thing I learned is that we have the guts not of a carnivore, but of an herbivore. Herbivore guts are very long because they have to get the last bit of nutrition out of leaves and things.

Anybody that doesn’t like Cardi B a hater!

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

Nothing feels better than going onstage and everybody is singing every word – and actually wanting to see you.