England understands good Chinese, Japanese and Indian cuisine; in France, we just get French.
I started culinary school at a very young age, and really I wanted to be out working, cooking, more than I wanted to be in a classroom. You could say I wasn't a very good student - I wanted to be a student of life and experience.
My journey was never hard; it just happened. From the second I held a knife, from the second I was in culinary school, it's all felt too good to be true. 'This cannot be my job, my life. Somebody has to be kidding with me!'
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
A good cult delivers on its promises. A good cult nourishes the needs of its members, has transparency and integrity, and creates provisions for challenging its leadership openly. A good cult expands the freedoms and well-being of its members rather than limits them.
By cultivating the beautiful we scatter the seeds of heavenly flowers, as by doing good we cultivate those that belong to humanity.
It's true that it's within the realm of cultural politics that young people tend to work through political issues, which I think is good, although it's not going to solve the problems.
There's such cultural rot taking place, such a disintegration throughout our culture. Values, morality, you name it. Standards have been relaxed, and people are not being held to them. People's intentions, if they're said to be good and honorable, that's all that matters.
I have very mixed feelings about Jesse Jackson. He's very good about labor, and human and civil rights issues, but not so good on cultural issues.
Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay.
Boxing gives you such a good workout, although I've stopped sparring. When your hand speed goes, you're going to get caught, and you can't afford to take cumulative smacks on the chops when you're a writer.
The World Cup is a very important way to measure the good players, and the great ones. It is a test of a great player.
I'm not everybody's cup of tea. But sometimes criticism can be hurtful. Be respectful. I'm a good piano player, I can sing well, I write good songs. If you don't like it, fair enough. But give me a break.
I am not good at small talk. I will hide in a cupboard to avoid chitty-chat.
I need to have dark chocolate in the cupboard - Green & Black's is good, but any will do.
What we've learned is that if you can make the right decision in the supermarket aisle, it's a heck of a lot easier to make a good decision when you reach in your cupboard when you're craving a snack at eight o'clock at night.
A lot of people who curate in the business, and curate the art, don't really have good artistic sense. They may know commerce, but they aren't savvy enough to know how to balance commerce and art, you know? They don't know how to satisfy both palates.
What is the role of a public intellectual in the age of Twitter and soundbites? Is it to share your thoughts for the public good, or is it to curate the heaps of hate emails, tweets, and right-wing articles that trash your intellectual and social work?
Part of the mystique of shows like 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' is the idea that they begin with a couple of plot lines, and then a bunch of geniuses improvise dialogue. It's not quite that unstructured and loose. It makes for a good urban myth, but everything's a little more tightly scripted and programmed than that.
Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.
