All my life, I've gone through life anticipating trouble. And here I am, well along on my eighty-fourth year, and like Epictetus, I've had a favored life. It didn't make me unhappy to anticipate trouble all the time and be ready to perform adequately if trouble came. It didn't hurt me at all. In fact, it helped me.

Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever.

If I don't do that with the bottles, then I sit down, I could be thinking of something else. If I do always the same things, it means that I am focused and I'm alert to think purely about tennis.

Occasionally there would be something I didn’t recognise and I’d record it with a question mark or, as a joke, LGM for Little Green Men. It was easier than saying “you know that funny pulsing source at right ascension 1919, declination plus 20”. So, it became LGM.

A lack of generosity. It can take so many forms—it doesn’t just have to do with money—so I’m always shocked when people can’t muster any at all.

There’s no such thing as cheap food. It can be affordable, but it can never be cheap. I think that’s something we’ve been indoctrinated by fast food culture to believe, that it can be cheap – that it can be fast, cheap, and easy. But every culture since the beginning of time has thought of food as something precious, and that’s the way I think about it. I want to give my money to the people who take care of the land, and who grow that food.

I decided that my attention would be in the dining room. I haven’t cooked in 28 years at Chez Panisse. ... I didn’t intend to be out of the kitchen. ... Now I’m in a different world and I contribute to the collaboration of the kitchen and I’m always working with a group of colleagues who inspire me, but I really miss being actually in the solving of the performance, that effort to really come up with dishes that are delicious and right.

The inclination to pretend I read a friend’s book when maybe I didn’t completely finish.

Shopping at the organic farmers market, buying whatever’s in season that looks the ripest and most vibrant, and bringing it home to cook with my friends.

My discomfort with being alone.