My mother cooked like a scientist. She had a giant Chinese-style cleaver that she chopped with, and a cupboard full of spices.

There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.

I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.

Rose Adams is a wonderful Christian woman who cared for my mother, Morrow Coffey Graham, in her last years of life.

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

I am who I am today because of my mother.

An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.

‚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.

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

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

If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

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

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.

Chefs are fond of hyperbole, so they can certainly talk that way. But on the whole, I think they probably have a more open mind than most people.

And I come here as a daughter, raised on the South Side of Chicago – by a father who was a blue-collar city worker and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

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

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

In cricket, my superhero is Sachin Tendulkar. He has always been my hero and will continue to remain so. Apart from him and outside cricket, my mother has remained my inspiration. Whatever difficult time I had faced, she was always there for me. She has given me all the strength. She maintained her composure and supported me in tough times.

To be in any way a positive contribution, that’s all anybody wants to be. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to be. I wanted to be an artist, be a mother. You want to feel that in your life you’ve been of use, in whatever way that comes out.

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 believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.

My mother encouraged me to be artistic. It was written in a contract at an early age that I would be an artist.

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

Life guided me to being a bodyguard, protecting people, then in the movies, so I’m happy with everything because basically all I ever wanted to do was be a good son and take care of my mother.

My mother was an Earth Mother and the nicest person in the world.

I don’t think it’s a good advert for any restaurant, a fat chef, and secondly, who wants to eat a dessert when the chef’s a fat pig.

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

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

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

I am the most unselfish chef in Britain today.

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

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

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

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.

Kitchens are hard environments and they form incredibly strong characters.

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.

I remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me.

If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.

I sang a song at my sister’s wedding. My mother forced me into that, too. But that one felt all right.

I’m a decent cook; I’m a decent chef. None of my friends would ever have hired me at any point in my career. Period.

My mother was a very wonderful woman. When she and my dad divorced, she moved to California and worked two jobs in the cannery at night and as a waitress during the day. But she saved enough money to establish a restaurant.

Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.

Before I was born, my father told my mother, ‚If it’s a boy, he’s going to be a scientist.‘

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

The scab is a traitor to his God, his mother, and his class.

I love Velveeta cheese.

A church without women would be like the apostolic college without Mary. The Madonna is more important than the apostles, and the church herself is feminine, the spouse of Christ and a mother.

Women tend to be more intuitive, or to admit to being intuitive, and maybe the hard science approach isn’t so attractive. The way that science is taught is very cold. I would never have become a scientist if I had been taught like that.

I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.

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

I was very worried about my mother, growing up – a lot. I do not want my children to be worried about me.

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

When I cook for my family on Christmas, I make feijoada, a South American dish of roasted and smoked meats like ham, pork, beef, lamb, and bacon – all served with black beans and rice. It’s festive but different.

In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.

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

I grew up thinking that a research scientist was a natural thing to be.

Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.

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.

My mother is a strong, wonderful woman. I could never be anything she didn’t want me to be.

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.