Nigella Lawson
On the whole, I prefer Christmas as an adult than I did as a child.Collection: Christmas
I was a quiet teenager, introverted, full of angst.Collection: Teen
You don't go around grieving all the time, but the grief is still there and always will be.Collection: Sympathy
There is a kind of euphoria of grief, a degree of madness.
I need to be frightened of things. I hate it, but I must need it, because it's what I do.
I never have plans for the future as you never know how things will turn out.
I am not sure about facelifts because I wouldn't want to be someone who just looks like she's had a facelift.
Gordon Ramsay makes me laugh because he knows that I'm not a chef.
It sounds like something on a very trite T-shirt, but life is what happens.
In fact I am quite snappy and irritable, and I don't know if I'd like to make myself worse in that respect.
There is something wrong about being photographed that has nothing to do with vanity.
I can understand why those primitive desert people think a camera steals their soul. It is unnatural to see yourself from the outside.
There is a vast difference between how things seem from the outside and how they feel on the inside.
I think maybe when you live with someone who is really very ill for a long time, it somehow gives you more of a greedy appetite for life and maybe, yes, you are less measured in your behaviour than you would otherwise be.
And, in a funny way, each death is different and you mourn each death differently and each death brings back the death you mourned earlier and you get into a bit of a pile-up.
Emotion is messy, contradictory... and true.
Cooking is actually quite aggressive and controlling and sometimes, yes, there is an element of force-feeding going on.
I'm not someone who's endlessly patient and wonderful.
At some stages of your life you will deal with things and at others you are overwhelmed with misery and anxiety.
You need a balance in life between dealing with what's going on inside and not being so absorbed in yourself that it takes over.
Anyway, what makes people look youthful is the quality of their skin and I don't think you can change that.
I never taste the wine first in restaurants, I just ask the waiter to pour.
I wasn't good with authority, went to lots of schools, didn't like the fact that there was no autonomy.
People who have fabulous childhoods have this sense that nothing is ever going to be that good again. With me, I have the sense that nothing is going to be that bad.
Also, in a funny way, if you have been happily married there are no unresolved areas, nothing to prove to yourself after the other dies.
'Statistically, people who have been happily married and then widowed tend to remarry.
The modern world is personal; people want to know intimate things.
But if you know that something has been really vicious, you don't read it, you don't let it into your head. What's damaging is when sentences go through your head and you burn with the injustice of it.
Then again, they're not scripted and I feel it's virtually impossible to be anything but yourself when you're in front of the cameras and cooking so there is a measure of truth in what you see.
I know the crew so well, so I forget I'm being filmed. It's like cooking with a friend in the kitchen - you're talking, as you do, and maybe you're telling her about this wonderful way to prepare lamb chops - it's more natural, more honest.
I don't believe in low-fat cooking.
In England and America people tend to graze all day long, but I think it's such a waste to be constantly picking at food because you then can't enjoy a proper full meal when the time comes.
You cannot truly say you live well unless you eat well.Collection: Inspirational
You could probably get through life without knowing how to roast a chicken, but the question is, would you want to?Collection: Food
I am not a chef. I am not even a trained or professional cook. My qualification is as an eater.Collection: Chef
Sometimes...we don't want to feel like a postmodern, postfeminist, overstretched woman but, rather, a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeggy fumes of baking pie in our languorous wake.Collection: Food
Sometimes it's good just to be seduced by the particular cheeses spread out in front of you on a cheese counter.Collection: Cheese
I think we all live in a world that is so fast-paced, it's threatening and absolutely saturated with change and novelty and insecurity. Therefore, the ritual of cooking and feeding my family and friends, whoever drops in, is what makes me feel that I'm in a universe that is contained.Collection: Food
I don't believe you can ever really cook unless you love eating.Collection: Believe
I am always surprised when people read double entendres into my innocuous babble.Collection: People
But I do think that women who spend all their lives on a diet probably have a miserable sex life: if your body is the enemy, how can you relax and take pleasure? Everything is about control, rather than relaxing, about holding everything in.Collection: Sex
I was brought up an atheist and have always remained so. But at no time was I led to believe that morality was unimportant or that good and bad did not exist. I believe passionately in the need to distinguish between right and wrong and am somewhat confounded by being told I need God, Jesus or a clergyman to help me to do so.Collection: Jesus
(In cooking), there is always room for careful tinkering.Collection: Cooking
Cake baking has to be, however innocently, one of the great culinary scams: it implies effort, it implies domestic prowess; but believe me, it's easy.Collection: Believe
Good olive oil, good butter, milk - they give food taste and depth and a richness that you cant reproduce with low-fat ingredients.Collection: Oil
I think sometimes that people assume because I'm on television I'm an expert, but I think the whole point of what I do is that I'm not and I don't have any training. My approach isn't about a fancy ingredient or style. I cook what I love to eat.Collection: Thinking
I do think awful things may happen at any moment, so while they are not happening, you may as well be pleased.Collection: Happiness
I lurch from chaos to chaos. I can't find my driving licence and my clothes are everywhere - cooking is the neatest thing I do.Collection: Clothes
And cooking is about balance and harmony.Collection: Balance And Harmony
If I could go into the woods and kill a bear myself, I'd wear it proudly as a trophy.Collection: Funny