Chris Barber's Quotes

In America, life is introverted, self-absorbed - and so is their music.

A frisky spirit makes my trombone sing.

Here in England we live at a slower pace, have more time to enjoy things - like good jazz.

Jazz of the sort we play is a happy, extroverted music. You don't have to think about it too much.

We play happy music, and we make people happy. That's why they like us.

I think all chefs who pursue great flavor have good ethics.

I'm not an environmentalist, or a doctor, or a nutritionist.

It's a fallen world. We eat and sacrifice in the process.

People complain that cities don't have fresh, sustainable food, but it's just not true.

There is no such thing as guilt-free eating.

Vegetables deplete soil. They're extractive. If soil has a bank account, vegetables make the largest withdrawals.

When you pursue great flavor, you also pursue great ecology.

Conventional agriculture has never succeeded in feeding the world, and it's never produced anything good to eat. For the future, we need to look toward alternatives.

I'm not here to say I don't eat vegetables - I do, a lot of them - but, from a soil perspective, they're actually more costly than a cow grazing on grass.

If you look at the carrying capacity of agricultural areas throughout the world, their ecological habitats are changing. So I think we're looking at - in our lifetime - great collapses of food services.

We need the humbleness and clarity to see that our food, while benefitting from technological advances, has benefitted even more from free ecological resources: Cheap energy, lots of water everywhere, and a stable climate.