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.

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.

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

Eating words has never given me indigestion.

Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time.

Let’s face it, a nice creamy chocolate cake does a lot for a lot of people; it does for me.

I try to very hard to avoid a situation where I would be eating cat or dog; I’ve managed to gracefully avoid that. It’s hypocritical of me and an arbitrary line, but one that I have managed to avoid crossing.

I, personally, think there is a really danger of taking food too seriously. Food should be part of the bigger picture.

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

Even if we give parents all the information they need and we improve school meals and build brand new supermarkets on every corner, none of that matters if when families step into a restaurant, they can’t make a healthy choice.

Remember, man does not live on bread alone: sometimes he needs a little buttering up.

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

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

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.

We never repent of having eaten too little.

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

I myself prefer my New Zealand eggs for breakfast.

Cooking today is a young man’s game, I don’t give a bollocks what anyone says.

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.

Tokyo would probably be the foreign city if I had to eat one city’s food for the rest of my life, every day. It would have to be Tokyo, and I think the majority of chefs you ask that question would answer the same way.

I would say there are some foods that I strongly recommend that you do not eat. No. 1 on that list, I believe, is doughnuts. Comfort food. Zero value. Don’t eat them.

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.

My father opened a restaurant. It’s so amazing… it’s so freaking delicious, but I’m telling you I gain five pounds every time I go in there.

Facts are to the mind what food is to the body.

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

Hong Kong is a wonderful, mixed-up town where you’ve got great food and adventure. First and foremost, it’s a great place to experience China in a relatively accessible way.

I’m not a sandwich store that only sells turkey sandwiches. I sell a lot of different things.

My weaknesses have always been food and men – in that order.

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

I always have breakfast, say, scrambled egg whites, a vegetable smoothie, or whole-grain cereal with low-fat milk. For lunch and dinner, I eat a lot of fish and vegetables. And throughout the day, I try to stay hydrated.

I try to work out my mind more these days. I try to eat right. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and I take the skin off chicken. But I’m not on no special diet. I like my steak and potatoes, ice cream, doughnuts.

Hunger is the best pickle.

When you cook under pressure you trade perfection.

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

We have food all around us all the time, and if we haven’t eaten for three hours, we think we’re starving. You’re not starving – human beings can go for 30 days without food.

Honestly, I just go to restaurants to eat so I won’t die. If there was a pill I could take in January and then I wouldn’t have to eat again for the rest of the year, I would take it. Of course, I wouldn’t want to sacrifice my chocolate cake and ice cream.

I hid myself in food.

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.

When I was 25 and I was told to eat 6 pieces of potato every day, someday it would be 8, someday it would be 10. Not that it’s going to make a big difference. But now when I am told by my nutritionist that you get to eat 6 pieces a day, it’s 6. Done!

There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

I’m certainly well taken care of in terms of food and clothes.

I don’t have much patience for people who are self-conscious about the act of eating, and it irritates me when someone denies themselves the pleasure of a bloody hunk of steak or a pungent French cheese because of some outdated nonsense about what’s appropriate or attractive.

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

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

There is one thing I have never taught my body how to do and that is to figure out at 6 A.M. what it wants to eat at 6 P.M.

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 cook, I create, I’m incredibly excited by what I do, I’ve still got a lot to achieve.

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

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.

The boys know they’re from Southeast Asia, and they have their food and their music and their friends, and they have a pride particular to them.

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

The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.

What nicer thing can you do for somebody than make them breakfast?

People are generally proud of their food. A willingness to eat and drink with people without fear and prejudice… they open up to you in ways that somebody visiting who is driven by a story may not get.

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.

Kitchens are hard environments and they form incredibly strong characters.

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

You don’t come into cooking to get rich.

Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

I have no desire to crow over anybody or to see anybody eating crow, figuratively or otherwise. We should all get together and make a country in which everybody can eat turkey whenever he pleases.

Green Eggs and Ham was the story of my life. I wouldn’t eat a thing when I was a kid, but Dr. Seuss inspired me to try cauliflower!