Paul Newman on food and character, from Wikiquote:
I like racing but food and pictures are more thrilling. I can’t give them up. In racing you can be certain, to the last thousandth of a second, that someone is the best, but with a film or a recipe, there is no way of knowing how all the ingredients will work out in the end. The best can turn out to be awful and the worst can be fantastic. Cooking is like performing and performing like cooking.
– Quoted in “Saint Paul,” interview with John Aldridge, The Guardian (2005-04-10)
This is so true about cooking. Even though you use the same foods and the same recipe, there’s something about how you feel while cooking that gets baked in to the final product. It reminds me of the story, Like Water For Chocolate, where the protagonist cries as she’s preparing a meal, and everyone who eats it gets sick.
I’d like to be remembered as a guy who tried — tried to be part of his times, tried to help people communicate with one another, tried to find some decency in his own life, tried to extend himself as a human being. Someone who isn’t complacent, who doesn’t cop out.
– Quoted in The Films of Paul Newman (1971) by Lawrence J. Quirk (Citadel Press), ISBN 0-806-50385-8), p. 36
The concept that a person who has a lot holds his hand out to someone who has less, or someone who isn’t hurting holds his hand out to someone who is, is simply a human trait that has nothing to do with celebrity. I am confounded at the stinginess of some institutions and some people. I’m bewildered by it. You can only put away so much stuff in your closet.
– Quoted in “Paul Newman’s Road To Glory,” interview with Paul Fischer, Film Monthly (2002-07-01)
Fanatic Cook 
Such fantastic heartfelt wisdoms. Thanks for sending this out
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They are, aren’t they. I really like the one about trying. It has so much hope about it.
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These selections are good examples of his life philosophy. Good to be reminded of him and caused me to remember I have a copy of “Newman’s Own Cookbook” from 1998 (with his friend A. E. Hotchner), Hadn’t looked at it for a very long time, but now going through it have been taken back to when he was enthusiastically involved in many things.
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He had a cookbook? How about that. I bet there are some good things in there. I’m going to jump over to Amazon to look at it.
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Life can be amazing. After mentioning A. E. Hotchner in association with Paul Newman (they were good friends and fellow-instigators of the Newman’s Own brand and the Hole in the Wall Gang Fund–all good works). Anyway, just awhile ago while driving heard that A. E. Hotchner is involved in a production of Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea. Mr. Hotchner is 101 years old. I hadn’t thought about him in many years and here all of a sudden, all this!
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I’m reading about him on Wikipedia. 101! And he’s still writing, and working. Wow. I love that enthusiasm for life.
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