If the divine creator has taken pains to give us delicious and exquisite things to eat, the least we can do is prepare them well and serve them with ceremony.

I like to start off my day with a glass of champagne...I like to wind it up with a glass of champagne, too. To be frank, I also like a glass or two in between. It may not be the universal medicine for every disease, as my friends in Reims and Epernay so often tell me, but it does you less harm than any other liquid.

Cuisine is not invariable like a Codex formula. But one must guard against tampering with the essential bases.

The duty of a good Cuisinier is to transmit to the next generation everything he has learned and experienced.

A good apprentice cook must be as polite with the dishwasher as with the chef.

A good meal must be as harmonious as a symphony and as well-constructed as a Norman cathedral.

If he is thin, I will probably dine poorly. If he is both thin and sad, the only hope is in flight.

There are many people who claim to be good cooks just as there are many people who, after having repainted the garden gate take themselves to be painters.

Every morning the cuisinier must start again at zero, with nothing on the stove. That is what real cuisine is all about.

In all professions without doubt, but certainly in cooking one is a student all his life.