Born on July 12th

"I love trying new restaurants."

"Food as a hobby used to be an elite pastime, and it has become something that is totally ordinary for people of every background. In that way, we see the growing up of the American food scene: that it's okay to be a regular person and be really into food."

"My relationship to food is that of an acrophobe to a bridge. Unease masks a desire to jump."

"If this is the end of the world, give me a fork and a knife."

"Los Angeles is a city of few hard targets. Its iconic buildings are private spaces, mostly residential, visible by invitation only or in the pages of a Taschen book. Its central industry is as mirage-like as the projection of light on a screen."

"Hollywood, the business, would be just fine if someone were to destroy the Hollywood sign. The city's there is the airport - its point of entry and exit, and in some ways its identity."

"Like the rest of the city, LAX is coming of age."

"I developed my taste for coffee at five, staying with my grandmother in Connecticut."

"Like funny men, skilled diners are apparently perceived to have an evolutionary advantage."

"Christmas cookies can't help but be retro - they are memory first, sugar-flour-egg-redhot-gumdrop-sparkle reality second."

"Los Angeles is a good city in which to be a reporter. Always entertaining, always an incubator."

"I will eat disgusting things, but only those with long established culinary traditions."

"There's something about the shape that a poem takes in my mind before I write it that has to do with suddenness."

"For me, it makes sense to address shocking experiences through poems because of the way poems also have that effect on the reader."

"I was terrified of taking the G.R.E."

"I don't think that I ever believed that poetry would be a career. I have always thought of poems as something more private than professional... I would never introduce myself as a poet. I will always have some other thing that I am."

"I find that people in the food world are amazingly willing to talk about what they are doing, even when those things are quasi-legal or taboo."

"Food is a lens for culture."

"Ultimately, taste is so niche and so personal."

"The food being presented at the most expensive restaurants, by the most sophisticated chefs, was not always recognizable as food to the diner - it required a leap of faith, and I felt curious about that phenomenon."

"I'm a total foodie."

"The world continues to offer glittering prizes to those who have stout hearts and sharp swords."

"Good God, do you mean to say this place is a club?"

"I found there are a lot of advantages to being on a small budget and having a small crew. You get some very intimate performances and naturalistic cinematography."

"My earliest memory of actually definitely wanting to be a filmmaker was when I got thrown out of class when I was 10 and I was storyboarding a short film I wanted to make with my friend's camera."

"I think some people get confused between development and pre-production. In pre-production, you know all your dates.You know when you're aiming to release the film. You've got your script. You've got everything sorted."

"Being such a fan of 'Star Wars', the dream is to be able to add something to the equation and bring something to the table like Death Troopers and ships."

"Yeah, I love Ewan McGregor, I think he's phenomenal."

"I think the second you rule anything out is the second you end up doing them and then you look like an idiot online. Honestly, I feel like I got my dream, I got to make 'Star Wars'."

"One of the things you do, when you have a scene or whatever it is you're doing, I replay that scene in my head and pick different positions to watch it from in my head."