Food Interviews

“For the first 20 years in my career all I did was add things; more courses, more silverware, more ingredients, adding, adding, adding. Only like three years ago or so I was able to really start focusing on removing and felt confident to do so. I finally created a dish where for the first time I felt like I achieved what I tried to do for 23 years.”

“My goal when I’m in front of an audience is to perform the piece and fill it with meaning. On stage, I concentrate on rationality and empathy, since the singer must feel a certain amount of emotion, but not too much.”

“I think it’s really important to not be afraid of failure and to push yourself to try things and jump in the cold water.”

“I struggled a lot. That was the reason I became a champion. A lot of people give up, a lot of people feel sorry for themselves. But I didn't.”

“I think we've all lived through the pandemic and it has awakened in all of us a concept of time, and how fleeting our time is and can be... I want to apply my energy doing good and creating and hopefully not squandering that. That's what I live for.”

“It's important for a novelist to use the imagination like a musician, a composer or a painter would, in a kind of non-logical way. I think it’s very important for me to not just become a kind of intellectual writer.”

“I want to be an authentic person. I start to feel that it’s a mission. I am not going to hold back on an opinion I have about something; I don’t know what the point of that would be.”

“If I want to make a movie and I can at 62, I will. But I want to leave the ring triumphant. I want this guy, this guy you see right now, I want him to be the guy who makes the movies, not the autumn dude.”

“I think a big part of writing comes out of an attempt to understand yourself. I just always felt whole when I was writing. I felt this kind of beautiful privacy that I never felt in any other way.”

“As a director, what I hope is to create situations where the actors will be able to be alive like real people even in the context of something that is quite manufactured.”

“The guys who are real artists are people who have figured out the art of living; their art is art because they live. They have made living an art, they have made an art of living. They are constantly inputting life as opposed to expressing life.”

“I hope the scale of my works is way bigger than what you see. I hope they live in you.”

“When I was younger I used to have more anxiousness to obtain things. But there are moments in which you obtain those things and then you relax.”

“It’s everything you need, but nothing extra. It’s what's essential. It’s a minimum state which you achieve when you can't add or subtract… It’s sort of this perfect state, that’s what I'm looking for.”

“I try to look at things more from the perspective that everything is happening for us, not to us. And so whatever challenges that were occurring at the time, perhaps they were happening just so this moment could happen.”

“I think the final circle in being an artist is connecting, making some conversation to the world you’re in. I think if you have that feeling of why you need to do something, you’ll find a way. And I think that really takes you forward!”

“My work is integrated completely into my life and vice-versa – I’ve been working since I was 16. My work is my life and my life is my work. It made me who I am.”

“You can catch ideas at a deeper level when you start meditating. Intuition grows, and intuition is the number one tool for an artist – feeling and thinking combined. The ideas are flowing, and the feeling that you can get it to feel correct. You know what that is. It’s a knowingness that grows. It’s really beautiful.”

“I think I will stop working when I am finally satisfied… And I cannot see that in the foreseeable future. The urge to do better and even better than that is what pushes me forward.”

“Most people make art and movies as a job and if a lot of people go to see it they make money and that is their sign of success. I am not making judgment here, but their goal is strictly business-oriented. I don't do this as a business.”

“I feel quite free as an artist. I don't feel that I have to prove anything. It’s a liberating feeling. I can go in any directions, I can explore and embrace whatever I want.”

“I don’t pander to anybody. I don’t care who it is. I just do the picture I do.”

“I would like to think that someday I will be content enough with myself and feel good enough about myself to think I don’t need to do all that sort of shit and I’ll just go and watch tomatoes grow or something.”

“I’m 80 years old now, and little by little over your lifetime you begin to understand things that you didn’t understand earlier.”

“It’s the rollercoaster ride of doing something creative: when it goes well and you enjoy the process then it’s a high and you just want to keep on doing it.”

“I believe anyway that the prime-time for every work of art exists in the time in which it was done. After that it’s transformation, continuous transformation.”

“Although sometimes I feel tired and think I ought to give it up, I don’t want to just retire. No, I enjoy it all and you just keep going until the day comes when you can’t do it anymore.”

“What I am looking for in this world is a sense of not feeling alone, and that’s one of the greatest gifts you can give to another person. I hope that my work does that. I hope that when people leave the theater they feel less alone.”

“If I pass away one day, I am happy because I tried to do my best. My sport allowed me to do so much.”

“When you are in a very, very tough moment of a day and have a lot of frustration because nothing is happening right—but you don’t give up—and suddenly that happens! That’s almost a transcendental thing.”

“I am very grateful for the films I’ve made. I’ve been able to make movies for $1 million and I’ve been able to make movies for $195 million. I can do what I want in different sizes for different reasons. I have been able to do 10 more movies than I thought I would ever make!”

“I am Valentino. I live in my own world. I love to create clothes, I love beautiful things. If they want to call me an icon, okay, then I am an icon.”

“I think that one should make a house that really fits you like your second soul. It should be your most preferred place on earth!”

“When you keep yourself open, you just might get to know yourself and know the good things about yourself. And that's why I always come back to songwriting. It's the way I kind of try and make sense of my life.”

“The first song that I wrote was the way of discovering if I could write a song. And after that one I knew that I understood the form. Everything after that became more personal.”

“I dreamed of winning the Olympics since I was nine years old. That was definitely the most memorable race of my career. But the next day I woke up, and I wanted to win the next race.”

“Making a movie comes with a great deal of joy, an incredible amount of hard work and equal amounts of stress, pressure, fun, and anxiety. But ultimately it’s extremely rewarding! I have the best job in the world.”

“To have those magical moments, the ones that require real trust or bravery or letting go, you’ve really gotta swing for the rafters! You’ve got to try and hit it out the park — although you might miss. You’re always trying to hit it into the rafters, and damn the consequences if you don’t make it.”

“I knew what felt instinctively right for me, and I pursued that throughout my entire career. It’s the way I live; it’s the way I work. Everything that I’ve done and everything that I have is an extension of my personal taste.”

“I think all the roles of my career have presented me with opportunities for my own personal growth. Roles that really push you out of your comfort zone, it really helps you to grow, and it then brings you greater capacity for love within yourself and love for others.”