I have solid decent people around me, and I believe that is all it is, because you will get destroyed if you have people bringing you down.

Most times, your blessings are also your curses. And for me, I have this ability to express myself so clearly with pen and paper, but when it comes to expressing myself verbally, I put up a big wall.

When I was a kid, I'd practise Chopin on piano - and I love Chopin! He's my dawg! Then I'd go out on the stoop and blast the radio. I'm from New York, the concrete jungle. Hip-hop influenced me from day one.

When I had nothing else, I had my mother and the piano. And you know what? They were all I needed.

My mixed-race background made me a broad person, able to relate to different cultures. But any woman of colour, even a mixed colour, is seen as black in America. So that's how I regard myself.

I know people who've gone to jail. It don't mean you stop loving them! They deservin' love just as much in there, and maybe they needin' it more.

Maturity and experience are part of my liberation.

My music comes from many, many, many places. My emotions, my feelings, my thoughts, and conversations I have with people I know who influence me.

The element of fire to me is very powerful because of what it symbolizes, how it symbolizes a strength. It symbolizes something that's unstoppable. You can't get through it, you know.

I don't dream - only if I'm uncomfortable or I'm going through something.

Failure isn't an option. I've erased the word 'fear' from my vocabulary, and I think when you erase fear, you can't fail.

The desire to play has always been in me. I remember my first experience at about four or five of really dying to sing and dying to play that came from no one telling me to do so.

I grew up in the middle of everything. I walked the streets alone, I rode the trains alone, I came home at three in the morning alone; that was what I did.

I definitely want to act, but I also want to score movies, and I have this idea to fuse classical music with other styles that would give it a different perception.

I feel more like I'm a person who has so much to offer in different capacities that it would be a danger for me not to give myself a chance to spread my wings in all different directions.

My parents weren't married. It wasn't like my dad up and left. I maintained a steady relationship with my grandparents. My dad's mother is my nana, and I'm closer to her than almost anybody in this world.

I am able to hang with the hardest, the baddest, the worst, and I'm able to hang with the most proper and be at ease. I'm able to hang with any skin colour, any belief. I just fit in everywhere.

When I was younger, my mother and I, we'd have these crazy, crazy fights. Everyone would storm out mad, and the only way that I'd be able to express myself was to write her. We would write letters back and forth for days. When I'm writing, I feel uninterrupted. I write what I'm going through and how I see it.

The way we subsidize food makes it cheaper to go to McDonald's and get a hamburger than a salad, and that's insane. It's pure government policy.

The biggest thing you can do is understand that every time you're going to the grocery store, you're voting with your dollars. Support your farmers' market. Support local food. Really learn to cook.

A whole set of values comes with fast food: Everything should be fast, cheap and easy; there's always more where that came from; there are no seasons; you shouldn't be paid very much for preparing food. It's uniformity and a lack of connection.

Food culture is like listening to the Beatles - it's international, it's very positive, it's inventive and creative.

Whenever I want to know how to cook something, I can't ask one chef - I have to ask six.

I used to do calligraphy, and I'm afraid that has lapsed, but I've always been interested in book printing.

If I weren't involved with food, I'd be working in architecture. Design is that critical to me.

I wanted people to come to the restaurant and feel at home, so I put it in a house.

My kitchen has a wood-burning oven, a large worktable, and windows all around, including one above the sink. I think whoever is washing the dishes needs to have a lot of beauty around.

People have become aware that way that we've been eating is making us sick.

I feel that good food should be a right and not a privilege, and it needs to be without pesticides and herbicides. And everybody deserves this food. And that's not elitist.

We make decisions every day about what we're going to eat. And some people want to buy Nike shoes - two pairs, and other people want to eat Bronx grapes and nourish themselves. I pay a little extra, but this is what I want to do.

I have been talking nonstop about the symbolism of an edible landscape at the White House. I think it says everything about stewardship of the land and about the nourishment of a nation.

I'm an optimist. I'm hopeful.

I know once people get connected to real food, they never change back.

We all need to know how to cook. I can buy a chicken and have many meals come from it. Is it affordable? Yes. Cheap? No. I want to pay the farmers the right price for food. They deserve it. They are the most important people in the country besides our teachers.

I have a love affair with tomatoes and corn. I remember them from my childhood. I only had them in the summer. They were extraordinary.

Usually, cheap food is not nutritious. You're feeding people, but you're not really feeding people something that is good for them.

I don't want food that comes from animals that are caged up and fed antibiotics. I am really suspicious of that kind of production of meat and poultry.

In countries around the world, people spend more money on food because they know how precious it is.

I have a fireplace in my kitchen that I light every night, no matter what.

I can't imagine leaving the restaurant. It's hard for me to separate my life from my work; I'm really thinking about what we're doing every day.

I used to think that I wanted to be a hat maker, but I don't think that would have worked out.

My mother made a lot of things because she thought they'd be healthy for us. There were some very unfortunate experiences with whole wheat bread and bananas. I always tried to get rid of that sandwich and eat one of my friends' lunches.

I can remember the three restaurant experiences of my childhood. All I wanted to do on my birthday was to go to the Automat in New York... but I don't know if you consider that a real restaurant.

My real emphasis is on the farmers who are taking care of the land, the farmers who are really thinking about our nourishment.

We have to understand that we want to pay the farmers the real price for the food that they produce. It won't ever be cheap to buy real food. But it can be affordable. It's really something that we need to understand. It's the kind of work that it takes to grow food. We don't understand that piece of it.

I once had an Early Girl tomato at my friend Jay's house, and I thought that was the best thing I'd ever had. But then I visited friends in Senegal, and I ate sea urchin pulled fresh out of the sea. It tasted like the ocean.

This is the power of gathering: it inspires us, delightfully, to be more hopeful, more joyful, more thoughtful: in a word, more alive.

I was a very picky eater.

A lot of equipment can get in the way of the connection with food, with touching and feeling.

The act of eating is very political. You buy from the right people, you support the right network of farmers and suppliers who care about the land and what they put in the food.