there is a major flaw in severe discipline. It suppresses flair, imagination and talent.

“There’s always an excuse for being an hour late,” he said. “But there’s no excuse for being five minutes late.”

We live in a world of refinement, not in a world of invention. That’s the way I see it. People who claim to have invented a great dish are only fooling themselves. Someone has always done it before.

my rivals reacted to the dire economic situation in a completely different way to me: they put their prices down. They reckoned that to reduce the price of a meal would bring in the punters, and when that tactic failed, they reduced their prices even further. They were searching desperately for the right price to appeal to customers. In contrast, I

“perfection is lots of little things done well.” His words did more than simply stick in my mind; they became my philosophy.

the plate became a clock. The top of the plate was twelve o’clock and the bottom of the plate was six o’clock; three o’clock was to the right and, of course, nine to the left. So if a chef was dressing pigeon with a petit pain of foie gras, I could shout across the kitchen, “Foie gras at twelve, confit of garlic at four . . .” You can never go

If you are not extreme, then people will take shortcuts because they don’t fear you.

Although I had spent a career questioning the way I cooked; I had never really questioned why I cooked; I just did it.

“Say you take two deciliters of chicken stock in two different pans. You reduce one down quickly, the other slowly. The taste of each stock is completely different because if you reduce something rapidly, you retain the flavor. By reducing it slowly it stews and you lose freshness and sharpness.”