I am very proud to come from a diverse family. My mother is an immigrant from Japan and my father is from a steel town in Western Pennsylvania. My family spans across the political spectrum.

Symbols have power and meaning and can mean different things to different people at different times and in different contexts.

My job on that first day, like for most green cooks, was official kitchen gofer. Whatever any other cook needed doing, I did it.

You'd think that being that guy who always has pizza to give away would make you really popular with the neighbors, but I've had people turn down free pizza after I'd offered it to them too many times.

The good news is that even if your early crepes have funny lumps and bulges or aren't paper-thin, they're still gonna be plenty edible and delicious.

Traditional cooking techniques inevitably form a gray band of overcooked meat around the outer edges of a steak. Sous vide, thanks to the gentle heat it uses, eliminates that gray band, producing a steak that's cooked just right from edge to edge.

The higher the temperature you use to cook, the faster energy is transferred, and the less evenly your meat cooks. Conversely, the more gently a steak is cooked, the more evenly it cooks.

Your goal when searing a steak is to make sure that the temperature and evaporation buckets are as small as possible, so that you can rapidly fill them up and move on to the important process of browning.

Though hot sauce preferences are personal, I'm pretty open to all styles. All except stunt sauces, that is - you know, sauces that are primarily designed to test your machismo.

It's good to recognize your flaws, but it's also good to recognize your skills.

Ham and cheese between two slices of bread do not make a great sandwich. But add some creamy mayonnaise, maybe some bright pickles, and some crunchy vegetables, and we got a decent lunch going on.

Like a good grilled cheese, a good quesadilla is one that takes its time cooking, for a thoroughly melted interior and nice, even browning.

Now, normally I do all my research on existing recipes before I start working on my own version.

Ten inches is a very versatile size for a skillet. It's the ideal vessel for sauteing vegetables for a small family or searing a couple of large steaks, pork chops, or pieces of fish.

2015 was simultaneously the year in which I consumed the most popcorn of my life and the year in which I received the most praise from my dentist.

My love of buttered popcorn has never been a secret. It runs deeper than a bottomless jumbo tub, free refills and all. It's my favorite food.

I've tested every imaginable brand of popcorn and popcorn-popping product I could get my hands on.

I love fresh-from-the-vine summer tomatoes almost more than any other food I can think of, and when I come home with a big haul from the farmers market, I'd like those tomatoes to be at peak flavor and texture for the whole week, until I can replenish them.

Anyone who understands evolution knows that it doesn't necessarily lead from simpler to more complex life-forms. Rather, it leads to life-forms better suited to their environments.

The key to a successful Thanksgiving is planning. Know what needs to get done, when it needs to be done, and how much effort and time it's going to take you.

We host Thanksgiving in my mother's apartment in New York. I don't know if you've seen many New York apartment kitchens, but they are not known for spaciousness.

Understanding is a three-edged sword. Your side, my side, and the truth.

Follow your passion. The rest will attend to itself. If I can do it, anybody can do it. It's possible. And it's your turn. So go for it. It's never too late to become what you always wanted to be in the first place.

People spend too much time finding other people to blame, too much energy finding excuses for not being what they are capable of being, and not enough energy putting themselves on the line, growing out of the past, and getting on with their lives.

No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever.

The point of mythology or myth is to point to the horizon and to point back to ourselves: This is who we are; this is where we came from; and this is where we're going. And a lot of Western society over the last hundred years - the last 50 years really - has lost that. We have become rather aimless and wandering.

Never follow somebody else's path; it doesn't work the same way twice for anyone... the path follows you and rolls up behind you as you walk, forcing the next person to find their own way.

For me, there's nothing sexier than a woman who can argue me into the ground and outsmart me... a woman who knows her own mind and isn't afraid to speak it.

There's a rule of writing: if everything is funny, nothing is funny; if everything is sad, nothing is sad. You want that contrast.

All love is unrequited. All of it.

The whole point of Superman, as originally created, was to be the ally of those who had no other allies. It put that magnitude of power, the most powerful guy in the world, in the service of those who had no hope, no chance.

Coming from TV and film, rule number one is that you always service the main character first and foremost. If that's not working, you've got nothing.

I was born in Patterson, New Jersey, and raised pretty much all around the country. My family tended to move from place to place following economic prospects and jobs and looking for new opportunities, so we changed schools, colleges, grade schools, high schools every 6 months to a year - depending on the breaks.

We are in a tech-heavy society, plunging headlong into an unknown future. Science fiction is what allows you to stand back and analyze the impact of that and put it in context of how it affects people.

On a certain level, I don't think there is an answer to what the American way is, because it is constantly being re-defined. It's also been exploited and capitalized upon and politicized by one side or the other to the point that a certain degree of cynicism has attached itself to that term.

I've made a decision and now I must face the consequences.

Writers write for one reason: to create an emotion in the reader, to reach across and make them feel something. You want a reaction. Yeah, it's nicer when the reaction is to throw flowers than it is to throw brickbats, but you have to accept both equally.

All you can do is focus on telling the best story you can with compelling characters. If you do it right, it will endure. If you do it wrong, it won't.

On the Internet, inside information is currency, and there will always be counterfeiters among us.

If I feel that I'm not able to do my best work - whether that's my own fault or as a result of an editorial situation - then I need to stop doing it. I would rather not do something than do it badly or ineffectively. It's the only way I can live with myself and do right by the fans in the long haul.

It's really important to me to keep growing as a writer, to look for new challenges and be harshly critical of my own work in order to learn and tell better stories.

Growing up as a kid, we moved all over the country on a fairly frequent basis, from New Jersey to Texas, California, Illinois... we moved 21 times in my first 17 years.

I always knew that I was going to be a writer. There was no question in my mind about that.

I keep waiting for a paradigm shift to happen that will let network and studio execs see that sci-fi is the same as any other genre in terms of how you approach it - logically, character-based, with challenging ideas and forward thinking - but I worry that it might never happen in my lifetime.

My philosophy: find what it is you want to say, walk in the room, say it, and get the hell out.

I grew up on comics and cartoons. So, as an adult, I like comics and cartoons.

Anyone who sets foot into the 'Watchmen' universe and isn't just a little nervous should be given a few days of electroshock therapy. I've always considered 'Watchmen' to be one of the best graphic novels ever written, and when it came out back in 1986 I was as blown away as everyone else. Just masterful.

I've written for every medium except poetry, at which I suck.

A lot of the futuristic space stuff seemed to me to be a very cool form of science-fiction, so that was my first real baptism in the genre.

Take care, don't fight, and remember: if you do not choose to lead, you will forever be led by others. Find what scares you, and do it. And you can make a difference, if you choose to do so.