Nigella Lawson Quotes

1. The modern world is personal; people want to know intimate things.


2. At some stages of your life you will deal with things and at others you are overwhelmed with misery and anxiety.

3. There is a kind of euphoria of grief, a degree of madness.

4. Cooking is actually quite aggressive and controlling and sometimes, yes, there is an element of force-feeding going on.


5. There is something wrong about being photographed that has nothing to do with vanity.

6. On the whole, I prefer Christmas as an adult than I did as a child.

7. 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.


8. I never have plans for the future as you never know how things will turn out.








9. 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.


10. You don't go around grieving all the time, but the grief is still there and always will be.






11. 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.


12. I'm not someone who's endlessly patient and wonderful.





13. 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.


14. Emotion is messy, contradictory…and true.





15. 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.

16. Gordon Ramsay makes me laugh because he knows that I'm not a chef.


17. There are two Christmas traditions I've inherited from my mother. One is the feeling that Christmas isn't complete if you haven't got a ham as well as a turkey. It means that the leftovers are much better. And in a curious way, despite the fact that we're talking about Christmas and ham, it's a very Jewish thing to want to provide a huge spread. I always cook for eight, but make enough to feed 30...

18. 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 behavior than you would otherwise be.

19. While I am sure there are a number of women who secretly wonder whether they are lesbian, most simply have, somewhere, a fantasy about having sex, in a non-defining, non-exclusive way, with other women.


20. I don't believe in low-fat cooking.







21. My sister lives in New York and she was struck by how class-ridden the reviews were. Everyone had to mention that I'm posh. British people are obsessed by that. I said to John: "I'm not posh. Is my voice posh?" 


22. I never taste the wine first in restaurants, I just ask the waiter to pour.




23. It's true that I wouldn't have written the first book had my sister and mother been alive. It was my way of continuing our conversation. It's also this Jewish thing of naming and remembering people, and I think there is a sense of keeping that side of life going.

24. There is a vast difference between how things seem from the outside and how they feel on the inside.


25. Obesity isn't caused by those who adore food. People tend not to put on weight through eating meals. I'd say it's people who eat non-stop.

26. The thing I liked about writing about food when I started it was that I felt I was writing about food in a different way. Not like a food writer.

27. 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.


28. I used to refer to myself as Typhoid Mary. It wasn't that I was jinxed, I just seemed to bring ill fortune to anybody I was close to. 



29. 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.

30. Cooking aside, I am what you'd call a domestic slut. Cooking is really the only domestic activity I enjoy. I would do anything not to do the normal bits of household work - it's not one of my strong points. 


31. It wasn't really a chat show, it was a magazine show. I looked at it as a summer job. As long as no one makes me interview a celeb again, I'll be happy. It wasn't what I signed up for but, of course, nowadays everyone likes celebs. I'm pretty bored of them, though. I wasn't interested and couldn't be bothered to pretend I was.

32. I put the kitch into kitchen.

33. 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.


34. It's like I can never watch myself on TV unless I have to do some editing before a show comes out. It's like hearing your voice back on a tape recorder and I'm sure you know how horrible that is. I always look for the worst things in myself - criticizing my hair and stuff. I'm very self-conscious about it all.

35. Anyway, what makes people look youthful is the quality of their skin and I don't think you can change that.

36. It's not meant to be flirtatious. Listen, I don't have a presenting style, I'm just me. I don't have the talent to adopt a different persona. It's intimate, not flirtatious.


37. I am always surprised when people read double entendres into my innocuous babble. 


38. I don't like conflict.

39. Some people did take the domestic goddess title literally rather than ironically. It was about the pleasures of feeling like one rather than actually being one.

40. I think cooking should be about fun and family. I'm not a trained chef. I don't pretend to be and I think part of my appeal is that my approach to cooking is really relaxed and not rigid. There are no rules in my kitchen. 


41. I can understand why those primitive desert people think a camera steals their soul. It is unnatural to see yourself from the outside.





42. I don't take criticisms personally, which must be very annoying for people who mean them personally.

43. 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. 


44. I am not sure about facelifts because I wouldn't want to be someone who just looks like she's had a facelift.




45. I was shy as a child. Now I'm not really shy any more, unless I'm with shy people. I find it contagious and I don't know what to say. But I don't think shyness is something one should feel apologetic about.

46. I lurch from chaos to chaos. I can't find my driving license and my clothes are everywhere - cooking is the neatest thing I do. 


47. I am greedy. I eat under stress. When you are eating, the rest of the world is tuned out. And when you tune back in you feel guilty about having been greedy and the rest of the world is still there, so you have to carry on eating!





48. I was a quiet teenager, introverted, full of angst.

49. I need to be frightened of things. I hate it, but I must need it, because it's what I do.


50. I wasn't good with authority, went to lots of schools, didn't like the fact that there was no autonomy.







51. It sounds like something on a very trite T-shirt, but life is what happens.

52. 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.


53. In fact I am quite snappy and irritable, and I don't know if I'd like to make myself worse in that respect.

54. Sometimes it's good just to be seduced by the particular cheeses spread out in front of you on a cheese counter.

55. I don't wear anything in bed. But I'm not ready for a nude scene quite yet.


56. Statistically, people who have been happily married and then widowed tend to remarry.






57. (regarding the death of her husband, John Diamond) I took a fortnight off. But I'm not a great believer in breaks. I don't want to be rattling around inside my own head. I did feel I was spiraling into a Kathy Burke character and tried going out, but I prefer it here. Filming keeps me busy. It absorbs me.


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