Top 130 Quotes & Sayings by Alice Waters

I eat meat, but no meat that isn't pastured is acceptable, and we probably need to eat a whole lot less.

I guess I don't really believe in retirement. I believe in shorter days and maybe in weekends!

I have a fireplace in my kitchen that I light every night, no matter what.

People have become aware that way that we've been eating is making us sick.

Food isn't like anything else. It's something precious. It's not a commodity.

It's around the table and in the preparation of food that we learn about ourselves and about the world.

We all need to know how to cook. I can buy a chicken and have many meals come from it. Is it affordable? Yes. Cheap? No. I want to pay the farmers the right price for food. They deserve it. They are the most important people in the country besides our teachers.

Hard-boiled eggs are wonderful when they're really done right. I bring the water to a boil, and then I put in the eggs. And then I boil them for - well, it depends on the size of the egg - maybe eight minutes.

I have been talking nonstop about the symbolism of an edible landscape at the White House. I think it says everything about stewardship of the land and about the nourishment of a nation.

I wanted people to come to the restaurant and feel at home, so I put it in a house.

Grass-fed cattle are leaner. But it's not true that they are less flavorful.

The biggest thing you can do is understand that every time you're going to the grocery store, you're voting with your dollars. Support your farmers' market. Support local food. Really learn to cook.

The way we subsidize food makes it cheaper to go to McDonald's and get a hamburger than a salad, and that's insane. It's pure government policy.

I was a very picky eater.

Usually, cheap food is not nutritious. You're feeding people, but you're not really feeding people something that is good for them.

The act of eating is very political. You buy from the right people, you support the right network of farmers and suppliers who care about the land and what they put in the food.

A whole set of values comes with fast food: Everything should be fast, cheap and easy; there's always more where that came from; there are no seasons; you shouldn't be paid very much for preparing food. It's uniformity and a lack of connection.

If I weren't involved with food, I'd be working in architecture. Design is that critical to me.

Buy foods from nearby farms and have that food served in the cafeteria.

Create a garden; bring children to farms for field trips. I think it's important that parents and teachers get together to do one or two things they can accomplish well - a teaching garden, connecting with farms nearby, weave food into the curriculum.

I really am at a place where I think we need to feed every child at school for free and feed them a real school lunch that's sustainable and nutritious and delicious. It needs to be part of the curriculum of the school in the same way that physical education was part of the curriculum, and all children participated.

First, kids should be involved in the production of their own food. They have to get their hands in the dirt, they have to grow things. They also have to become sensually stimulated, and the way to begin is with a bakery.

I know once people get connected to real food, they never change back.

Everything tastes better with butter. Meat that has fat in it is tender in a certain way, flavorful in a certain way. It's hard to deny the flavor quotient there.

I feel like old age in America is a very sad thing. I have been many different places around the world where getting older is something you look forward to.

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

I am an optimist of the first order.

I think if you buy from people who are taking care of the land, you're supporting the future of this country.

I want every child in America to eat a nutritious, delicious, sustainably sourced school lunch for free.

English food writer Elizabeth David, cook and author Richard Olney and the owner of Domaine Tempier Lulu Peyraud have all really inspired the way I think about food.

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

I'm an optimist. I'm hopeful.

Whenever I want to know how to cook something, I can't ask one chef - I have to ask six.

We make decisions every day about what we're going to eat. And some people want to buy Nike shoes - two pairs, and other people want to eat Bronx grapes and nourish themselves. I pay a little extra, but this is what I want to do.

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.

In Berkeley, we built the garden and a kitchen classroom. We've been working on it for 12 years. We've learned a lot from it. If kids grow it and cook it, they eat it.

I'm always changing my work, as there are endless ways to think about food.

I have a love affair with tomatoes and corn. I remember them from my childhood. I only had them in the summer. They were extraordinary.

I can't imagine leaving the restaurant. It's hard for me to separate my life from my work; I'm really thinking about what we're doing every day.

In countries around the world, people spend more money on food because they know how precious it is.

A lot of equipment can get in the way of the connection with food, with touching and feeling.

I just hope Americans come to understand that food isn't something to be manipulated by our teeth and shoved down our gullet, that it's our spiritual and physical nourishment and important to our well-being as a nation.

The fact that most kids aren't eating at home with their families any more really means they are eating elsewhere. They are eating out there in fast food nation.

I feel that good food should be a right and not a privilege, and it needs to be without pesticides and herbicides. And everybody deserves this food. And that's not elitist.

We eat every day, and if we do it in a way that doesn't recognize value, it's contributing to the destruction of our culture and of agriculture. But if it's done with a focus and care, it can be a wonderful thing. It changes the quality of your life.

I think health is the outcome of eating well.

You do need some dispensation for local farmers, because the fast food industry will promote the unsanitary conditions of farming. With vegetables, you have to be careful where they come from; you have to know the farmers and trust them. If you buy from the farmers' market, it's already been investigated.

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

I used to think that I wanted to be a hat maker, but I don't think that would have worked out.

Food culture is like listening to the Beatles - it's international, it's very positive, it's inventive and creative.

My mother made a lot of things because she thought they'd be healthy for us. There were some very unfortunate experiences with whole wheat bread and bananas. I always tried to get rid of that sandwich and eat one of my friends' lunches.

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.

If we don't preserve the natural resources, you aren't going to have a sustainable society. This is not something for Chez Panisse and the elite of San Francisco. It's for everyone.

I'm unwilling to eat food that has been adulterated.

I can remember the three restaurant experiences of my childhood. All I wanted to do on my birthday was to go to the Automat in New York... but I don't know if you consider that a real restaurant.

This is the power of gathering: it inspires us, delightfully, to be more hopeful, more joyful, more thoughtful: in a word, more alive.

We have to understand that we want to pay the farmers the real price for the food that they produce. It won't ever be cheap to buy real food. But it can be affordable. It's really something that we need to understand. It's the kind of work that it takes to grow food. We don't understand that piece of it.

My real emphasis is on the farmers who are taking care of the land, the farmers who are really thinking about our nourishment.

My kitchen has a wood-burning oven, a large worktable, and windows all around, including one above the sink. I think whoever is washing the dishes needs to have a lot of beauty around.

I don't want food that comes from animals that are caged up and fed antibiotics. I am really suspicious of that kind of production of meat and poultry.