When I’m back in New York – and this is a terrible thing to complain about – I eat a lot more really, really good food than perhaps I’d like to. So many of my friends are really good chefs. It’s kind of like being in the Mafia.

The events that I have attended to mark my Diamond Jubilee have been a humbling experience. It has touched me deeply to see so many thousands of families, neighbors and friends celebrating together in such a happy atmosphere.

I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.

I’m a decent cook; I’m a decent chef. None of my friends would ever have hired me at any point in my career. Period.

Do I have chocolate chip cookies? Yes, I do. Do I have mint chocolate chip milkshakes? Yes, I do. I love them. They are fantastic. But when I have them, they’re worth it. I earned them. I did something. I worked out super hard. I stayed clean on food.

Eating words has never given me indigestion.

I love food.

Chefs are nutters. They’re all self-obsessed, delicate, dainty, insecure little souls and absolute psychopaths. Every last one of them.

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood – never.

I used to make little movies when I was younger. I’d make my friends be in them and then edit them.

I like the fact that Melbourne always seems to support their chefs and promote them in ways I find really admirable.

Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

I ride my bike almost every day here in New York. It’s getting safer to do so, but I do have to be fairly alert when riding on the streets as opposed to riding on the Hudson River bike path or similar protected lanes.

I think every chef, not just in America, but across the world, has a double-edged sword – two jackets, one that’s driven, a self-confessed perfectionist, thoroughbred, hate incompetence and switch off the stove, take off the jacket and become a family man.

If I’m in Rome for only 48 hours, I would consider it a sin against God to not eat cacio e pepe, the most uniquely Roman of pastas, in some crummy little joint where Romans eat. I’d much rather do that than go to the Vatican. That’s Rome to me.

A lot of the time when I write about the person that I love, I feel like I’m writing about New York.

Much publishing is done through politics, friends, and natural stupidity.

All of my friends who have younger siblings who are going to college or high school – my number one piece of advice is: You should learn how to program.

You just feel a little odd when you don’t get your kind of food. Fortunately, there are Indian restaurants all over the world.

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.

When you’re a chef, you graze. You never get a chance to sit down and eat. They don’t actually sit down and eat before you cook. So when I finish work, the first thing I’ll do, and especially when I’m in New York, I’ll go for a run. And I’ll run 10 or 15k on my – and I run to gain my appetite.

I’m so happy because today I found my friends – they’re in my head.

Would I swap what I have achieved as a cook if I could have been as successful as a footballer? Definitely.

I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it.

I was always singing but didn’t plan on pursuing it seriously. When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn – I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point – and that was it.

Among the friends of Union, there is great diversity of sentiment and of policy in regard to slavery and the African race among us.

Remember that before ‚Roe v. Wade‘ was decided, there were four states that allowed abortion in the first trimester if that’s what the woman sought: New York, Hawaii, California, Alaska. Other states were shifting. And people were fighting over this issue in state legislatures.

I love Velveeta cheese.

The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.

To start with, I love New York… It’s a little bit of the whole world… In New York, the whole world comes to you.

What really motivates people at Facebook is building something that’s worthwhile, that they’re going to be proud to show to friends and family.

I like the app where you can make your own memes. I make memes all the time and send them to my friends.

After a hard day of basic training, you could eat a rattlesnake.

I hid myself in food.

I was very blessed to have family and friends, but particularly family, who told me I was not only all right, I was just right, so I believe that my brain is a good one, and it’s lasting me very well.

I’m a fry lover.

International affairs is very much run like the mafia. The godfather does not accept disobedience, even from a small storekeeper who doesn’t pay his protection money. You have to have obedience; otherwise, the idea can spread that you don’t have to listen to the orders, and it can spread to important places.

I was performing in New York and my friends started to call me Gaga, they said I was very theatrical and they said, ‚You’re Gaga‘.

My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.

There are GMO skeptics more in Europe maybe than in other places, but not exclusively.

I’m not a sandwich store that only sells turkey sandwiches. I sell a lot of different things.

A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.

I love trying out different cuisines. In Delhi, I love Megu at the Leela, and TK’s at the Hyatt. I also enjoy Khan Chacha’s rolls. In Mumbai, it’s Royal China and Shiro. And in Bangalore, I like the food at Bricklane.

When I’m home, I spend Sunday with my husband. If we’re not cooking, we travel around in our camper, stop at fast-food restaurants, and picnic. We love that stuff that will harden your arteries in a hurry.

As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.

For me, New York is comfortable, not strange.

The French have got taste.

The only way I hear gossip is if it’s big enough and loud enough for my friends to bring it up to me. Or if it’s, like, a big untrue ordeal from my publicist – and she hates making that phone call!

I was born in London in England in 1934. I went through, as a child, the horrors of World War II, through a time when food was rationed and we learned to be very careful, and we never had more to eat than what we needed to eat. There was no waste. Everything was used.

I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not sick. Not wounded. Dead.

In New York I pretty much live in diners – I order French Fries, Diet Coke floats and lots of coffee.

I remember when I was in high school I didn’t have a new dress for each special occasion. The girls would bring the fact to my attention, not always too delicately. The boys, however, never bothered with the subject. They were my friends, not because of the size of my wardrobe but because they liked me.

This character feels so much like my brother. He has two children. He has a wife. He works with me. He chooses to stay in New Hampshire because he wants his kids to grow up in the school they started with. He doesn’t want them to lose friends. He is his family’s hero.

Hunger is the best pickle.

Don’t believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves.

Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.

It’s no secret that in New York during the last 30 years there has been a tragic exodus from the churches into materialism, secularism and humanism.

I’m not looking to freak people out – eating rodents or bugs. I don’t do that anymore.

In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats twice as much as nature requires.

I am confident that nobody… will accuse me of selfishness if I ask to spend time, while I am still in good health, with my family, my friends and also with myself.

I’m sure that at no point in my life could I ever have shown the kind of focus and discipline and commitment necessary to work a station at elBulli or Le Bernardin. No. That ain’t me.