My grandfather gave me inspiration to cook and love food and flavors. My Aunt Raffie gave me creativity and the inspiration to create new things. My mother inspires me to find simplicity in food.

If I could only have one type of food with me I would bring soy sauce. The reason being that if I have soy sauce I can flavor a lot of things.

Know how to garnish food so that it is more appealing to the eye and even more flavorful than before.

Love like a chicken salad or restaurant hash must be taken with blind faith or it loses its flavor.

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

Life has a certain flavor for those who have fought and risked all that the sheltered and protected can never experience.

If you eat a lot of starchy foods introduce a vegetable once a week then twice a week and then three times a week. Slowly fill your diet with new flavors. By the time you're ready to let go of whatever it is you want to let go of you've got a full menu.

I was never afraid of failure after that because I think coming that close to death you get kissed. With the years the actual experience of course fades but the flavor of it doesn't. I just had a real sense of what choice do I have but to live fully?

If you look over the years the styles have changed - the clothes the hair the production the approach to the songs. The icing to the cake has changed flavors. But if you really look at the cake itself it's really the same.

Pastry is different from cooking because you have to consider the chemistry beauty and flavor. It's not just sugar and eggs thrown together. I tell my pastry chefs to be in tune for all of this. You have to be challenged by using secret or unusual ingredients.

My contribution I hope is to get people to eat full-flavored food. If I could come away with that alone that would be a fantastic accomplishment. I'm also very proud of being a very American chef.