“I come from an Italian family. One of the greatest and most profound e...” — Mario Batali Quote

I come from an Italian family. One of the greatest and most profound expressions we would ever use in conversations or arguments was a slamming door. The slamming door was our punctuation mark.

We would load up the yellow Cutlass Supreme station wagon and pick blackberries during blackberry season or spring onions during spring onion season. For us, food was part of the fabric of our day.

Are we Darwinists - where we live and let live? Or are we nurturing as a society? There has to be a standard of living that we decide to support.

When I was in college, I used to write little ditties and short stories and poetry for my friends. Writing a book is another thing. It is so much different from my traditional day of dirty fingernails and greasy hair and hot pans.

In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing.

We had that horrible experience with 'Behind the Music' where they just made it all salacious. That's not about the band - that's a soap opera. If you're together with a spouse or a partner for 40 years, you're going to have arguments. But if you're with four other people, you're going have exponentially that many more things happen.

A successful argument for a government manufacturing policy has to go beyond the feeling that it's better to produce 'real things' than services. American consumers value health care and haircuts as much as washing machines and hair dryers.

My dad shaped the footballing side of me, and Mum shaped me as a person. I've always been very close to her - we've only ever had one argument, and that was over something stupid when I was 13.