“No,” he said, holding up the bag of supermarket flour. “The recipe’s right on the package. But when you cook a dish with passion, you elevate even a box recipe.”

My father died when I was young. That is the central tragedy of my life. But his spirit never left me, and that may be the defining miracle of my life.

The memory of trying a food for the first time imprints itself into the flavor. A happy memory can make a food delectable, make you crave it, savor it, and, when it is gone, dream about the next time you will have it. Every time I have caviar, I am a teenage boy in Andorra, hanging out with my friend Jacques, eating spoonful after spoonful of

“Only if you cook what you love and truly understand will people be happy with your food. Running a restaurant is not a popularity contest. It is not really any way to get rich. But you can make beautiful food and you can live your life your way,” he told me one day as he was writing out the menu on the chalkboard. “C’est toi qui décides. It must

Fish, which is what I did for Robuchon, is more technical, but meat is more sensual. At the time, I was more of an intellectual chef. But it’s important to have both—the instinct and the technique, the elegance and the muscular sensuality—to be a great chef.

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.

It was a round robin of pain and heartbreak: My father broke my mother’s heart. My mother broke my heart by marrying Hugo. Hugo punished me because my mother was no longer happy with him and I hated him in return.

We only get one shot at this life, so why not float like a butterfly and sting like a bee?

“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”