Don't try to be the next Rachael Ray or Bobby Flay we already have those people. We want someone who is going to make their own mark on 'Food Network.'

If my daughter wants to get into this business I would support that decision. She's going to have a hard time not being in it. She loves food and she's around it all the time.

Food decisions - do I eat this or not? - are always going to be there.

It's fun to pick a cuisine and say I'm going to research Ethiopian food and see what it's all about. You find that there are a lot of similarities in cuisines from around the world and a lot of similar flavors.

As far away as you can get from the process of mechanisms and machinery the more likely your food's going to taste good. And that - that is probably the largest thing I can hand to anybody is let your hands touch it. Let them make it.

I'm a filmmaker who decided to go to culinary school. All I picked up was the fact if I didn't understand what was going on with every single ingredient I could be qualifying for like the lunch food job at my daughter's school.

I will never use a substitute for butter. Margarine is one molecule away from eating plastic. If I'm going to eat that type of food it's going to be the real deal.

I don't want to spend my life not having good food going into my pie hole. That hole was made for pies.

My food is Louisiana New Orleans-based well-seasoned rustic. I think it's pretty unique because of my background being influenced by my mom Portuguese and French Canadian. There's a lot going on there.

Being a food show and being me I always kicked it up a notch which means I would always elevate the spice level or the complexity of a particular dish. So it was always like we're going to kick this up a little bit.

Music is one of those things that is constantly going in my head all the time. It's sort of like the evolution and creation of doing food or my philosophy about wine. It's always beating in my head so it keeps the spirit moving.

Fast food is hugely important in the life of a comedy writer. All we do is order in and what we're going to eat is hotly debated.

Instead of going out to dinner buy good food. Cooking at home shows such affection. In a bad economy it's more important to make yourself feel good.

It has never made any sense to argue that unique among the people of the world Arabs are more concerned on a day-to-day basis about the treatment of people they don't know than they are about how they're going to put food on their own tables or whether their sons will ever find a job.

Cats have a scam going - you buy the food they eat the food they go away that's the deal.

When two kids are being completely berserk and they're naked and throwing food around sometimes I just let it go because I can see a future where they're going to be dressed and they're going to be at school. So I kind of let stuff go sometimes.

I don't think there's going to be a day when I don't think about food or my body but I'm living with it and I wish I could tell young girls to find their safe place and stay with it.