Behind every small business there's a story worth knowing. All the corner shops in our towns and cities the restaurants cleaners gyms hair salons hardware stores - these didn't come out of nowhere.

The U.S. tries to provide immigrants who grow up here with a world-class education and imbue them with the can-do attitude that has long defined American innovation.

Everyone goes to the same exhibitions and the same parties stays in the same handful of hotels eats at the same no-star restaurants and has almost the same opinions. I adore the art world but this is copycat behavior in a sphere that prides itself on independent thinking.

All art comes from other art and all immigrants come from other places.

Murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums.

And I think there's something about conservatives frankly - and the Left when it comes to their channels of persuasion are unpersuasive. They are most of them are hate-filled obscenity-clogged rants of anger and hatred.

Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.

You hit a certain age and - especially because of TV - the young cooks coming up say 'You're a sellout because you're doing something other than what you should be doing.' 'Top Chef' is a double-edged sword for me: There's a whole group of people who will not come to the restaurants because they assume I'm not in them anymore all I do is TV.

The sanitary and mechanical age we are now entering makes up for the mercy it grants to our sense of smell by the ferocity with which it assails our sense of hearing.