I live in Indiana and teach at Purdue University, a wonderful school with some of the brightest students I have ever had the privilege of working with. My colleagues are powerful and intelligent and kind. The cost of living is low, the prairie is wide, and on clear nights, I can see all the stars in the sky above.

For celebrities, privacy is utterly nonexistent. You are asked intrusive questions about your personal life. You can be photographed at any moment.

I think the world is ambivalent about feminism. So I can't blame college students. I think they're reflecting the greater culture's attitude toward feminism. So what I can do is, in ways that are appropriate, advocate for feminism and help the students learn what feminism is about.

I think it was really entering my 30s that I began to embrace feminism and call myself a feminist.

If a woman wants to take her husband's name, that's her choice, and I still think she can be feminist while doing that.

I think Lena Dunham is a very bright and very interesting writer, and what she's accomplished at such a young age absolutely impresses me.

Everyone else thinks I'm a nonfiction writer. I think it's because my nonfiction is easier to find. But I write both in equal measure. I love writing fiction because I can totally lose myself, and I get to make up the rules of the world that I'm writing.

We were the only black family in my neighborhood for many years. Wherever we lived, we were often the only black family, and certainly the only Haitian family. But my parents were really great at providing a loving home where we could feel safe and secure.

I am 39. I am single. I am a black woman. I have too many advanced degrees. Many a news story tells me finding true love is likely a hopeless proposition. Now is the time when I need to believe in fairy tales.

I can consider not only great art, but the context in which that art has been created. I can consider the people who paid a price for that art to be created and whether or not I want to appreciate that art on their backs.

If I were ever to grace the pages of 'Vogue,' I would want my image retouched because the audience is so vast. There is great vulnerability in being exposed to that many judging eyes. I feel no small amount of guilt over this willingness to surrender my ideals.

If I am ever in the spotlight, I want to look good.

There is an odd assumption that compassion and care are finite or that critics can be everything to everyone - commenting on everything simply because they can. That's not what cultural criticism is.

I was in love with the idea of love, so I created elaborate fictions for my relationships - fictions that allowed me to believe that what any given paramour and I shared looked a lot like love.

My parents have been married for 42 years. Their marriage has been - from what I can see - a happy one.

Day after day with them, I see more and more of my parents in me. I see where all my quirks come from. I see my future.

I want to take the time to think through how I feel and why I feel. I don't want to feign expertise on matters I know nothing about for the purpose of offering someone else my immediate reaction for their consumption.

We have to believe that we can hold different points of view without labeling each other bad feminists.

I live in Indiana and teach at Purdue University, a wonderful school with some of the brightest students I have ever had the privilege of working with. My colleagues are powerful and intelligent and kind. The cost of living is low, the prairie is wide, and on clear nights, I can see all the stars in the sky above.

Cooking is one of the most zen things - you have to be there.

It's so easy to produce food, throw it away, and watch people starve. It's so hard to produce food mindfully and to feed and to reduce waste.

In mainstream media, everything gets turned into a stereotype of ourselves.

All Korean food is not just one thing.

Straight up, Oreos, sodas, chips, salsa dips, egg white omelets, yogurts, breads, ketchups, mustards, barbecue sauce, frozen pizzas, hot pockets, ice cream, all these things that you eat in your normal life - I think if chefs got more involved in that, then it could be better. Because we're the ones that know flavor.

When you have parents that come from a country that you weren't raised in, you feel this weird sense of familiarity, like you've returned to something.

Korean food is primarily based on herbs and shoots and sprouts. There's no pasture land in Korea; we eat like Hobbits.

Public television is a very important thing for our human race, and it allows us the ability to discuss the elephants in the room and understand stories beyond the headlines.

I'm a little old-school in that I think there's some value in the classics and the steps of achieving a certain profession. If we start slanging the word 'chef' on anybody and everybody who cooks, it takes away a lot.

When you come out of the ocean after surfing all day, loco moco is the best thing you ever tasted.

I'll never be able to outlive Kogi. Kogi is a beast.

I want to reshape fast food in America.

I don't really do that much office work. I just go to the office, and I'm like Steve Carell in 'The Office.' You know, like, I just go around and like - I don't know what I do in the office. I look at paperwork and act like I'm understanding what's going on there, and I shake my head and put my hand on my chin and like, 'Hmm.'

Cooking is not a craft to get into for money. The money may come, or it may not. But you must get into it for the craft and the culture.

I have a tendency to trail off in conversations. I don't look up at people sometimes when I talk or cook, and those are all pretty bad no-no's being in front of the camera.

I realized why I can cook for different environments. Because of everything I've gone through growing up. Why can I cook for a Hollywood event without blinking an eye? Because I cooked at the Beverly Hilton and because I moved to Villa Park. Why can I cook for kids on Hollywood Boulevard at night? Because I went through it.

A-Frame became an expression of creating a place where everyone would feel comfortable, even if you were made to feel uncomfortable in restaurants before. It's a place where I explored my own insecurities as far as being mistreated in restaurants or being given the worst table.

At my lowest point, I found cooking.

Pico Union is an underrated part of L.A., and not a lot of people go unless you live there.

I dream like a shaman.

A-Frame was a real, pivotal moment because that's where I really got to channel a lot of emotions.

I don't really care about job security.

I've got a lot of experience under my belt, but I still have a very naive and idealistic outlook on life.

I typically like Sicilian pizza.

My restaurants are about community and about sharing and about warmth.

As a young manager, I had no idea what it meant to be a chef.

Even as a kid I wasn't, like, a natural entertainer, where I would gather everyone around me and then sing or something at family parties.

I want to pay homage to Los Angeles.

Time is an illusion anyway. You can create as much time as you want.

I don't really have a strategy for social media. I think that's my strategy is that I don't have a strategy.

The Korean taco was a phenomenon... It just came out of us. We didn't really think about it.