The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

You can’t hurry love, and you can’t rush puff pastry, either. You can knead too much, and you can be too needy. Always, warmth is what brings pastry to rise. Chemistry creates something amazing; coupled with care and heat, it works some kind of magic to create this satisfying, welcoming, and nourishing thing that is the base of life.

I'm a woman; in so many ways I've been programmed to please. I took the job and spent time hunkered over figures, budgets, charts, and fiscal-year projections. I tried, but I hated it. "Working at a job you don't like is the same as going to prison every day," my father used to say. He was right. I felt imprisoned by an impressive title, travel, perks, and a good salary. On the inside, I was miserable and lonely, and I felt as if I was losing myself. I spent weekends working on reports no one read, and I gave presentations that I didn't care about. It made me feel like a sellout and, worse, a fraud. Now set free, like any inmate I had to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.

The sharper your knife, the less you cry...for me, it also means cutting those things that get in the way of your passion and living your life the way it is meant to be lived.

I didn't start cooking until I was thirty-two. Until then, I just ate. - Julia Child

Living is like driving," my grandmother used to say. "You have to pick a lane." Have I chosen the right lane? It feels like this place, this moment in time, lies exactly halfway between my past and my future.

Vous perdez votre temps! (You're wasting your time.)

With that, I lost a job I was desperate to quit.

Working at a job you don't like is the same as going to prison every day," my father used to say.

An emperor walks with his court through many fields of roses until they come to a barren spot. There he sees one rose. "It's the most beautiful rose I've ever seen!" the emperor cries. Those walking with him point out that he'd just been through a field of similar roses. "Yes, but THIS one I can see.

Chefs are magicians in white, accomplished at slight of hand.

Pastry is like people . . . You can't hurry love, and you can't rush puff pastry either. You can knead too much, and you can be too needy. Always, warmth is what brings pastry to rise. Chemistry creates something amazing; coupled with care and heat, it works some kind of magic to create a satisfying, welcoming, and nourishing thing that is the base of life.

Wine has a powerful effect on the ability to speak a foreign language. In my current state, I’m certain I speak fluently.

My mother always says, 'Eighty percent of what you worry about never happens anyway.'...So much of life is a farce, in both meanings of the word. Much of our life is made up of situations one might find in a traditional comedy - misunderstandings, wrong expectations, and odd situations that, in retrospect, seem quite amusing. How much of what happens is just stuff? Of course, there is always that other 20 percent.

Living is like driving,' my grandmother used to say. 'You have to pick a lane.' Had I chosen the right lane? It feels like this place, this moment in time, lies exactly halfway between my past and my future. It's too late to change back. When I return to Paris on Monday, I must really start living there. So far, I've barely ventured outside of my apartment, except to go to school.

As in cooking, living requires that you taste, taste, taste as you go along—you can’t wait until the dish of life is done.

You don’t see a bowl of wet brains every day,” she says, and who can argue—until we use it for almost a week.

He wraps a bay leaf, thyme, and parsley with the dark green portion of a leek and secures it with a string. Voilà, a bouquet garni.