All the great things are simple and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom justice honor duty mercy hope.

The truth is I love being alive. And I love feeling free. So if I can't have those things then I feel like a caged animal and I'd rather not be in a cage. I'd rather be dead. And it's real simple. And I think it's not that uncommon.

On a level of simple personal survival understanding and forgiveness are crucial... whether in an intimate personal relationship or on a global level.

The simpler the food the harder it is to prepare it well. You want to truly taste what it is you're eating. So that goes back to the trend of fine ingredients. It's very Japanese: Preparing good ingredients very simply without distractions from the flavor of the ingredient itself.

Peruvian food is so simple yet amazingly flavored with their traditional spices.

Somewhere near you somebody right now is trying to help the indigent and poor - providing food shelter clothing or simple kindness.

I taped my first series for PBS in 1982 at WJCT-TV in Jacksonville Florida. The show called 'Everyday Cooking with Jacques Pepin ' was about saving time and money in the kitchen - and it was a celebration of simple and unpretentious food.

From the simple stringing together of lemon garlands for the goddess Durga to dividing the prasadam or blessed foods for the children first I came to associate food not only with feminity but also with purity and divinity.

Keep it simple in the kitchen. If you use quality ingredients you don't need anything fancy to make food delicious: just a knife a cutting board and some good nonstick cookware and you're set.

My goal is to make Italian food clean and accessible and beautiful and tasty with simple ingredients that people can find at a local grocery store because people don't want to go to a gourmet shop in search of items that will sit in their pantry for years after they use just a teaspoon or pinch of them.