“One of the secrets, and pleasures, of cooking is to learn to correct something if it goes awry; and one of the lessons is to grin and bear it if it cannot be fixed.”

“There's only one secret to bachelor cooking — not caring how it tastes.”

“The correct lesson to learn from surprises: the world is surprising.”

“Man cannot live without joy. That is why one deprived of spiritual joys goes over to carnal pleasures.”

“The lesson of history is that no one learns.”

“The lessons one learns at school are not always the ones the school thinks it's teaching.”

“When you can't bear something but it goes on anyway, the person who survives isn't you anymore; you've changed and become someone else, a new person, the one who did bear it after all.”

“The secret of good cooking is, first, having a love of it… If you’re convinced that cooking is drudgery, you’re never going to be good at it, and you might as well warm up something frozen.”

“Hegel is correct: we learn from history that we cannot learn from it.”

“I don't believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food you make. … Maybe the cat has fallen into the stew, or the lettuce has frozen, or the cake has collapsed—eh bien, tant pis! Usually one's cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is truly vile … then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile—and learn from her mistakes.”