Quotes About Dedication

He loved her way: acting casual, working like a Trojan, singing like an angel. Not angelically. The voice of an angel. Winged, lethal, close to the sun.

At the base of my right forefinger is an inch-and-a-half diagonal callus, yellowish-brown in color, where the heels of all the knives I've ever owned have rested, the skin softened by constant immersion in water. It distinguishes me immediately as a cook, as someone who's been on the job a long time. You can feel it when I shake my hand, just as I feel it on others of my profession. It's a secret sign, a sort of Masonic handshake without the silliness.

Practicing your craft in expert fashion is noble, honorable, and satisfying. And I'll generally take a stand-up mercenary who takes pride in his professionalism over an artist any day.

There is no halfway. You don't, it turns out, sell out a little bit. Maybe you thought you were just going to show a little ankle – okay, maybe a little calf, too – but in the end, you're taking on the whole front line of the Pittsburgh Steelers on a dirty shag carpet.

Line cooks are the heroes.

Selling out is getting a job.

Character you either have or don't have. Bigfoot understood that there are two types of people in the world: those who do what they say they're going to do — and everyone else.

What most people don't get about professional-level cooking is that it is not all about the best recipe, the most innovative presentation, the most creative marriage of ingredients, flavours and textures; that, presumably, was all arranged long before you sat down to dinner. Line cooking - the real business of preparing the food you eat - is more about consistency, about mindless, unvarying repetition, the same series of tasks performed over and over and over again in exactly the same way.

Most jobs, you don't work, you don't get paid. You wake up with a sniffle and a runny nose, a sore throat? You soldier on. You put in your hours. You wrap a towel around your neck and you do your best to get through. It's a point of pride, working through pain and illness.

His hands flew, twirled, an entire ballet with ten digits. It had taken him, he told me, three years, during his training and apprenticeship, just to be considered as having mastered rice alone. For three years in his first kitchen, it had been all he'd been allowed to touch.

Voltou noventa minutos mais tarde e conseguiu trabalhar com uma mão, fazendo muito capazmente mais de 150 jantares à la carte. Fiquei satisfeito com esta demonstração de lealdade. Trabalhar mesmo com dores e ferimentos conta muito para mim.

All these women have been up since way before dawn, many of them out on the water for hours, hauling in fish, loading them into their little round basket boats, unloading on shore. Yet no one looks tired. No one looks beaten down or defeated by their work.

So, Justo's not being disingenuous when he says he identifies each piece of fish with the name and reputation of his chef. That—at that level of fine dining—is The System, where every server, every cook has to look at every little detail as having the potential to bring down the temple. Everything—absolutely everything—must be right. Always.

permission. When I began work on the translation long ago, it was an early and ready decision to dedicate the first volume to my wife and our only

Having a moment of clarity was one thing; I'd had moments like that before. It had to be followed with a dedicated push of daily exercise. It's a trite axiom, but practice DOES make perfect. If you want to be a strong swimmer or an accomplished musician, you have to practice. It's the same with sobriety, though the stakes are higher. If you don't practice your program every day, you're putting yourself in a position where you could fly out of the orbit one more time.

Flea, you can't quit, I pleaded. I'm going t? be the James Brown of the eighties.

I wanted to be the best at whatever it was that was in front of me.

Widmerpool still represented to my mind a kind of embodiment of thankless labour and unsatisfied ambition.

suggestion of public service, even

No one ever achieved a goal by being interested in its achievement. One must be committed.

Deciding to commit yourself to long term results rather than short term fixes is as important as any decision you'll make in your lifetime.

success is simple. First, you decide what you want specifically; and second, you decide you're willing to pay the price to make it happen—and then pay that price.

Making a true decision means committing to achieving a result, and then cutting yourself off from any other possibility.

People who consistently succeed are those who can commit all of their resources, mental and physical, to work together toward achieving a task.