Chuck Close Quotes

I don't have any specialties. Anything I cook, I just make it special.

It's very hard to be an innovator at the highest level in any discipline. For some chefs it's merely about combining ingredients, but that's something you can do with your eyes closed.

The art of the cuisine, when fully mastered, is the one human capability of which only good things can be said.

I think baking is an incredible thing; cooking in general is an incredible thing.

After all these years of cooking and writing recipes, I am still amazed every time I notice how even the minutest of variation in technique can make a spectacular difference.

A great chef is an artist that I truly respect.

I've never been a great cook.

I'm always changing my work, as there are endless ways to think about food.

I never try to marry more than three flavors in one dish.

Chefs love to have that control and power to control the message they want to deliver.

Cooking well, with love, is an art.

If you are careful,' Garp wrote, 'if you use good ingredients, and you don't take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day; what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard sane.

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.

When she goes about her kitchen duties, chopping, carving, mixing, whisking, she moves with the grace and precision of a ballet dancer, her fingers plying the food with the dexterity of a croupier.

A good cook is the peculiar gift of the gods. He must be a perfect creature from the brain to the palate, from the palate to the finger's end.

Recipes are just descriptions of one person’s take on one moment in time. They’re not rules.

In the hands of an able cook, fish can become an inexhaustible source of perpetual delight.

Own what you are, and I mean whether that's art, or whether that's fashion, or whether that's music, or whether that's acting, or whether that's politics, or whether that's literature; it's own what you are, and grab it, and, you know, be as prolific as possible.

Being different is a talent. You illuminate what makes you special in the sea of sameness around you.

Great writers create; writers of smaller gifts copy

I'm a misunderstood genius.

There's so many people out there who try to imitate what I do but I am the original.

To cook is not just to prepare food for someone or to cook for yourself; it is to express your sincerity. So when you cook you should express yourself in your activity in the kitchen. You should allow yourself plenty of time.

It's not all about acting. It's about giving an art of entertainment to humanity.

In the age of mediocrity and clones, John Stowell's uniqueness and originality are a breath of fresh air. I love playing with him.