Females make better cooks than men. Females have a better palate. They have a better sense of smell. They never take shortcuts; this is why they're very good in kitchens. The weakness in what they do is they are not as physically strong as men, so they're never really given the opportunity.

Cooking is a philosophy; it's not a recipe.

My tortured life - with its extremes and conflicts - might have been difficult for me to deal with, but the press couldn't get enough of it. I was in the papers every day, 'the enfant terrible of the culinary world.'

Generally, I respect critics; they have their job to do.

I want to live forever, and I know I won't. I'm not afraid of dying. I'm only afraid of one thing: not being able to raise my kids.

I know that for me, whenever I'm in a situation where there's death or sickness, my personality is to come in and do whatever I can to ease anything I can, in terms of offering to take care of things. Cooking, organizing, things like that.

The first thing I tried to do in the months after losing my mother was to write a poem. I found myself turning to poetry in the way so many people do - to make sense of losses. And I wrote pretty bad poems about it. But it did feel that the poem was the only place that could hold this grief.

We've taken on the major health problems of the poorest - tuberculosis, maternal mortality, AIDS, malaria - in four countries. We've scored some victories in the sense that we've cured or treated thousands and changed the discourse about what is possible.