This is the great challenge: to maintain passion for the everyday routine and the endlessly repeated act, to derive deep gratification from the mundane.
Thomas KellerRead
Its not about passion. Passion is something that we tend to overemphasize, that we certainly place too much importance on. Passion ebbs and flows. To me, it's about desire. If you have constant, unwavering desire to be a cook, then u'll be a great cook.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Success comes from a strong and persistent desire rather than just passion.
In this quote, Thomas Keller emphasizes the distinction between passion and desire in achieving success. While passion can be fleeting and may not always be reliable, a consistent and unwavering desire drives individuals to pursue their goals relentlessly, ensuring that they can excel in their chosen fields, such as cooking.
Themes
DesireSuccessPassionCommitmentCooking
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can inspire culinary students at a graduation speech.
More from Thomas Keller
All quotes →When you acknowledge, as you must, that there is no such thing as perfect food, only the idea of it, then the real purpose of striving toward perfection becomes clear: to make people happy, that is what cooking is all about.
Thomas KellerRead
Once you understand the foundations of cooking - whatever kind you like, whether it's French or Italian or Japanese - you really don't need a cookbook anymore.
Thomas KellerRead
It wasn't about mechanics; it was about a feeling, wanting to give someone something, which in turn was really gratifying. That really resonated for me.
Thomas KellerRead
I think that you’ve got to make something that pleases you and hope that other people feel the same way.
Thomas KellerRead
I hope the cooks who are working for me now are getting that kind of experience so they can use what they're learning now as a foundation for a great career.
Thomas KellerRead
Similar quotes
No person may enjoy outstanding success without good health.
Napoleon HillRead
Excuses are the nails used to build a house of failure.
Jim RohnRead
In a competitive industry, only paranoid incumbents - those constantly striving for betterment - have any hope of surviving.
Raghuram RajanRead
It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.
Arnold J. ToynbeeRead
If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.
John D. RockefellerRead
Nothing good comes in life or athletics unless a lot of hard work has preceded the effort. Only temporary success is achieved by taking short cuts.
Roger StaubachRead