My greatest strength is common sense. I'm really a standard brand - like Campbell's tomato soup or Baker's chocolate.

When we blindly adopt a religion a political system a literary dogma we become automatons. We cease to grow.

My favorite hobby is being alone. I like to be alone. I also like dancing fishing playing poker sometimes and vegetable gardening - corn tomatoes cucumbers I have a big garden every year.

I don't really believe in diets. I love food... If I deprive myself I'm going to want it more. I snack on yogurt raw cashews and cherry tomatoes.

When you cut that eggplant up and you roast it in the oven and you make the tomato sauce and you put it on top your soul is in that food and there's something about that that can never be made by a company that has three million employees.

They eat the dainty food of famous chefs with the same pleasure with which they devour gross peasant dishes mostly composed of garlic and tomatoes or fisherman's octopus and shrimps fried in heavily scented olive oil on a little deserted beach.

I grew up in a family where the women were just nuts. They didn't stand around in cardigans making polite conversation while they chopped tomatoes.

Mexican food is far more varied than people think. It changes like dialects. I was brought up in Jalisco by the sea on a basic diet - tomatoes chillis peppers of every size and rice which is a Mexican staple. The Pacific coast has a huge array of seafood.

These days it's cool to be ethnic and to be different but when I was a kid it was not cool - at all. My friends would come over and my mom would make crepes with eggs stuffed with mozzarella cheese tomatoes and spinach. And they'd be like 'What is this?'