Quotes from Eric Ripert

To me, it's very important to have time at the restaurant but also time with family and time for myself.

I am not a picture guy. I like to live in the present and keep the image of the past vivid in my mind. I don't need the precision of the picture.

I'm a very bad baker.

I barely speak English.

I'm very inspired by other cultures and very often use what I perceive to be exotic ingredients.

When I see someone who has responsibilities, most of the time I can pinpoint that person because of the way he carries himself.

You don't become a chef to become famous.

Chefs are leaders in their own little world.

In New York there used to be some very good clubs with amazing sound systems. Techno was part of the process.

I find the organic wave much more interesting in America than in France.

A lot of foreign people say, when asking about eating habits, 'What is your guilty pleasure?' I have no guilt. Whatever I do, I enjoy and it's the point. I think if you start to feel guilty about it, that's a problem. So, no guilty pleasures. I have pleasure and no guilt at all.

One thing I don't like is complaints.

A lot of people believe that when you are Buddhist, you are the Dalai Lama. I'm certainly not.

The importance of reading, for me, is that it allows you to dream. Reading not only educates, but is relaxing and allows you to feed your imagination - creating beautiful pictures from carefully chosen words.

the important thing, Jacques instructed me, was to get the pan hot as you could before adding the meat - that, and always give good wine to your butcher.

It wasn't her fault, but it was her fate, like so many single mothers, to be caught between a wistful child and his fantasies of the father who is perfect, in part because he is hardly ever there.

my father...there was never any mistaking his love for me. When I walked into the room, his eyes lit up and he wrapped me in his arms as if it was Christmas morning and I was the best gift imaginable.

It was a very happy time in my life, and that was an important lesson too: to learn how little it took to be happy, to understand from a young age that the human heart is a small and delicate vase. You must handle it carefully, but in the right circumstances, it does not take much to fill it up.

The Cheesecake Factory's not that bad.

When I am about to have a difficult project, I dream I am climbing a mountain. When everything is going fine, I dream I am going down the mountain.

Factory farming's evil; you know that.

Everybody wants to support his own region and economy and farming. If we can preserve the land and if we can preserve the ocean, we all know, deep inside that we're doing the right thing.

I am a Buddhist, therefore I should not be collecting anything - however, I have a collection of Buddhas. I have a lot of them.

I am convinced that if you serve great value, people will come to you.