I've always followed the rule that anything worth doing is worth doing excessively.

Part of life is to live it, and enjoy it, and seize the moments that you find particularly pleasing.

Fettuccine Alfredo is dangerous for your health.

When I put my nose in a glass, it's like tunnel vision. I move into another world, where everything around me is just gone, and every bit of mental energy is focused on that wine.

I've always followed the rule that anything worth doing is worth doing excessively.

These are the people who do studies that your carry-out Chinese meals are saturated in fat. I'd just like to meet them! I mean, what do they do for pleasure?

I believe that the responsibility of the winemaker is to take that fruit and get it into the bottle as the most natural and purest expression of that vineyard, of the grape varietal or blend, and of the vintage.

I'm a common-sense kind of guy.

No sane man can afford to dispense with debilitating pleasures; no ascetic can be considered reliably sane.

I'm an anti-industrial kind of guy.

My personal philosophy is, you can be sure of nothing.

The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite.

As I've grown older, I've developed an appreciation for wines that are immediately gratifying but that can also provide great satisfaction over several years.

As far as vintage Champagne goes, I loved 1990; it's a great, great vintage. I bought a lot of 1990 Blanc de Blancs Champagne - my favorite kind - and I plan on drinking it all by 2005.

Back in 1990, there were fewer than 20 wineries in and around Paso Robles, a farming community midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Most of the wines produced there were rustic, highly tannic and alcoholic, with little charm or finesse.

Generally speaking, when Australian winemakers try to make delicate, European-styled wines of finesse and lightness, the wines often come across as pale imitations of the originals. One exception is Australian Riesling, delicious, dry wines meant to be consumed in their first two years of life.

I always said your best palate is your own, not mine. I'm a guidepost.

I like white wine when it's young and vigorous. I don't think you should cellar white wine at all, unless it's white Burgundy, and definitely not nonvintage Champagne.

I think the Japanese love young, tannic red wines much more than most Americans do. Perhaps it is because Asians have a great fondness for tea, and tea is a very tannic beverage. Therefore a young, tannic red wine is something familiar to an Asian palate.

In the wine world, crusaders would have wine consumers believe that the only wines of merit are something completely indefinable but which they call 'authentic' or 'natural.'

It's nearly impossible to believe just how provincial the wine world was in 1978, the year I launched my journal, 'The Wine Advocate.' There were no wines exported from New Zealand and virtually none from Australia (including Penfolds Grange, one of the greatest wines in existence).

Nineteen-eighty-two is a vintage of legendary proportions for all levels of the Bordeaux hierarchy. In short, it is a vintage which has produced the most perfect wines in the post-World War II era.

No scoring system is perfect, but a system that provides for flexibility in scores, if applied by the same taster without prejudice, can quantify different levels of wine quality and provide the reader with one professional's judgment.

The best Chateauneuf-du-Papes are among the most natural expressions of grapes, place and vintage. Chateauneuf-du-Pape vineyards are farmed organically or biodynamically, and the region's abundant sunshine and frequent wind (called 'le mistral') practically preclude the need for treating the fields with herbicides or pesticides.

The first famous winemaking consultant was the late professor Emile Peynaud, who reigned over Bordeaux throughout the 1940s, '50s, '60s and '70s.

What happens is that the people who are leaders in any field are copied. I mean, there's a reason why every wine newsletter tends to look like mine. They see someone who's been successful, so they sort of copy these same ideas.

What's important in a cellar is having wines that have a broad range of drinkability, which California Cabernet does. Wines with a broad range of drinkability give you a lot of flexibility; they are the sort of wines that make me feel secure. I think of my wine cellar as security - if the apocalypse comes, I can just go down to the cellar.

Wine to me is something that brings people together. Wine does promote conversation and promote civility, but it's also fascinating. It's the greatest subject to study. No matter how much you learn, every vintage is going to come at you with different factors that make you have to think again.

Wine writers have been around for almost as long as there has been wine, but in the past, generally speaking, most wine writing was uncritical and emphasized wine as a romantic, historic beverage. Criticism and comparative tastings were eschewed for fear of offending the trade, which most writers depended upon for survival.

You can't simplify my taste and say, 'Parker likes big wines,' because it's just not true.

Almost everyone will find something in our services worth paying for.

What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary incitement to work.

A true critic ought to dwell upon excellencies rather than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.

What a year to live in! Worth all other times ever known in our history or any other.

Good habits are worth being fanatical about.

A minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.

No civilization other than that which is Christian, is worth seeking or possessing.

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.

A good novel is worth more then the best scientific study.

Every day some new fact comes to light - some new obstacle which threatens the gravest obstruction. I suppose this is the reason which makes the game so well worth playing.

Then I found books that were written much later, as late as 15 years ago. It was very superficial material, but enough to tell me that the genesis of this story was worth exploring.

The situation in Iraq will be long, it will be expensive and it will be difficult. But in the end, Iraq will very much be worth it.

I think the Space Shuttle is worth one billion dollars a launch. I think that it is worth two billion dollars for what it does. I think the Shuttle is worth it for the work it does.

I won't apologize for ticket prices. I think we're well worth it. We consider ourselves in the elite touring acts, like the Stones, Elton John, Paul McCartney.

A book is worth a few francs; we Germans can afford to destroy those. We all may not appreciate artistic merit, but cash value is another matter.

That would be getting up at 5 am... I don't understand why film's shoot such brutal hours. I think it'd be worth it to not be so strictly cost-effective and have an 8 hour day. The film's would benefit in the end.

By the time a bartender knows what drink a man will have before he orders, there is little else about him worth knowing.

I've been careful to keep my life separate because it's important to me to have privacy and for my life not to be a marketing device for a movie or a TV show. I'm worth more than that.

The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well.