Top Chef is a very smooth-running machine. All the people working there are incredibly professional and absolutely at the top of their game.

People in London think of London as the center of the world, whereas New Yorkers think the world ends three miles outside of Manhattan.

I miss being fawned over by restaurateurs and chefs.

I expect that in 40 years' time I'll be writing political tomes and working for an organisation like Oxfam.

I tried being a mechanic and I tried catering, but I realized I had even less aptitude for semi-skilled labour than for academic work.

Everyone said to me growing up, "You're like an American. You have to go to America. That's your spiritual home."

My life's ambition is to play a James Bond villain. I have the cat and the eye-patch, so I'm just waiting for the call. For some reason, though, the phone hasn't rung.

I've become a professional failure - in order to pay the mortgage I have to remain unemployed. Luckily, a disaster always seems to befall me at exactly the right moment.

I don't envy young Brits crossing the Atlantic to make their fortunes today.

I wouldn't describe myself as a master of anything.

There's no reason why you can't deliver a grammar-school curriculum to an all-ability intake.

great men take and overtake risk tactically

I have a good relationship with Lifetime.

If you have to write a fictional adventure to convey a philosophy of evil, the best person is the destroyer of evil himself, Lord Shiva.

You can do anything, but not everything.

The menu de degustation is the finest expression of avant-garde cooking.

Skills are cheap. Passion is priceless.

Deny your weakness, and you will never realize God's strength in you.

Within-group conflict is always personal and emotional - even if it begins with impersonal issues.

Unresolved emotional pain is the great contagion of our time — of all time.

White bee, even when you are gone you buzz in my soul You live again in time, slender and silent.