Alice Waters

I once had an Early Girl tomato at my friend Jay's house, and I thought that was the best thing I'd ever had. But then I visited friends in Senegal, and I ate sea urchin pulled fresh out of the sea. It tasted like the ocean.

I used to do calligraphy, and I'm afraid that has lapsed, but I've always been interested in book printing.

I feel it is an obligation to help people understand the relation of food to agriculture and the relationship of food to culture.

We have to bring children into a new relationship to food that connects them to culture and agriculture.

When I first went to Paris in 1965, I fell in love with the small, family-owned restaurants that existed everywhere then, as well as the markets and the French obsession with buying fresh food, often twice a day.

It's hard to come into a new relationship with food unless you're engaged in an interactive way at an early age; it's hard to change your values.

I came to all the realizations about sustainability and biodiversity because I fell in love with the way food tastes. That was it. And because I was looking for that taste I feel at the doorsteps of the organic, local, sustainable farmers, dairy people and fisherman.

Food can be very transformational, and it can be more than just about a dish. That's what happened to me when I first went to France. I fell in love. And if you fall in love, well, then everything is easy.

I don't think it ever works to tell people what they can't eat. They can do it for so long, and then they fall off. You have to bring them into a new relationship with food.

I love those tiny little onions in the spring that are so small they're almost like a little chive.

The decisions you make are a choice of values that reflect your life in every way.

I do feel like food should cost more, because we aren't paying farmers a living wage. It has to cost more.