Quotes from Alice Waters

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

I really like having someone who knows about food and what goes well together make a meal for me.

I love those tiny little onions in the spring that are so small they're almost like a little chive.

When you have good ingredients, cooking doesn't require a lot of instruction because you can never go very wrong.

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

It's hard to come into a new relationship with food unless you're engaged in an interactive way at an early age; it's hard to change your values.

I believe there should be breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack, all for free and for every child that goes to school. And all food that is good, clean and fair.

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

In Berkeley, we built the garden and a kitchen classroom. We've been working on it for 12 years. We've learned a lot from it. If kids grow it and cook it, they eat it.

When I first went to Paris in 1965, I fell in love with the small, family-owned restaurants that existed everywhere then, as well as the markets and the French obsession with buying fresh food, often twice a day.

Food should be cheap, and labor should be cheap, and everything should be the same no matter where you go; whether it's a McDonald's in Germany or one in California, it should be the same. And this message is destroying cultures around the world. Needless to say, agriculture goes with it.

I really appreciate the many neighbourhoods of Berkeley. There is still the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. And it has the University of California, which is the greatest gift, to my mind, to be close to it. It keeps the place alive.

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

I'm unwilling to eat food that has been adulterated.

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

The decisions you make are a choice of values that reflect your life in every way.

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.

Organize yourself so you aren't struggling to shop at the last minute. When you have real food, it's very easy to cook.

I am an optimist of the first order.

I'm an optimist. I'm hopeful.

You do need some dispensation for local farmers, because the fast food industry will promote the unsanitary conditions of farming. With vegetables, you have to be careful where they come from; you have to know the farmers and trust them. If you buy from the farmers' market, it's already been investigated.

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

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

Eating is an environmental act.