‚Kitchen Confidential‘ wasn’t a cautionary or an expose. I wrote it as an entertainment for New York tri-state area line cooks and restaurant lifers, basically; I had no expectation that it would move as far west as Philadelphia.

Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time.

The food here is terrible, and the portions are too small.

If my films make one more person miserable, I’ll feel I have done my job.

I knew early on that I wanted to entertain in some form. And I knew I would work as hard as anyone to do it.

You don’t come into cooking to get rich.

I can remember earning £5,000 a game playing for Hibs at the end of the Seventies. They let me commute from London, train on the Friday and play on Saturday. That lasted until my friends at the Inland Revenue decided to take two-thirds. That wasn’t very entertaining for me.

My show ‚The Big House‘ was picked up; they flew me to New York. I’m about to step on stage to announce Kevin Hart’s ‚The Big House.‘ And a hand grabs my shoulder, ‚Kevin no, they just decided to cancel it.‘ It’s a serious smack-in-the-face business, and either you can take it, or you can’t.

I do love the films I’ve done in the past. I work hard in my movies and my friends work hard and we’re trying to make people laugh and I’m very proud of that.

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.

I like my fair share of board games.

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.

My philosophy is, it’s always very rewarding when you can make an audience laugh. I don’t mind making fun of myself. I like self-deprecating comedy. But I’d like you to laugh with me occasionally, too.

I’d love to go into WWE and have a real knock and see what’s what.

The tradition of the South is not urban… I think we are a region of storytellers, naturally, just from our tribal instincts. We did not have the pleasures of the theater or the dance, motion pictures when they came along. We simply entertain each other by talking.

Growing up I didn’t watch movies.

I enjoy acting when you really hit it right.

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.

One knew in advance that life in New York would not be easy, but there were cheap rents in cold-water lofts without heat, and the excitement of being here made up for those hardships. I didn’t move to New York to make a fortune.

One of the powerful temptations is that of the cinema palace. The cinema has undoubtedly an enormous attraction for boys, and people are constantly cudgelling their brains how to stop it. But it is one of those things which would be very difficult to stop even if it were altogether desirable.

I would say there are some foods that I strongly recommend that you do not eat. No. 1 on that list, I believe, is doughnuts. Comfort food. Zero value. Don’t eat them.

Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage.

The Kobe craze really annoyed me. Most of the practitioners had no real understanding of the product and were abusing it and exploiting it in terrible and ridiculous ways. Kobe beef should not be used in a hamburger. It’s completely pointless.

I like Cardi B!

There is a saying in Baltimore that crabs may be prepared in fifty ways and that all of them are good.

Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.

The best book, like the best speech, will do it all – make us laugh, think, cry and cheer – preferably in that order.

People get a kick out of my stupidity.

Wrestling is intimate. You can reach out and touch the wrestlers.

I like chicken a lot because chicken is generous – that is to say, it’s obedient. It will do whatever you tell it to do.

I eat steak primarily. That’s pretty much what my diet consists of. Sometimes I supplement that with other steaks.

Chris Rock does the political thing really well, but that never worked for me.

One of the things you’re doing when you make art, apart from entertaining yourself and other people, is trying to see what ways of working feel good, what feels right.

When you’re in comedy, people always come up and say, ‚Oh, it must be so hard.‘ It really isn’t hard unless you’re not good at it. If you can do it, its really kind of fun and easy.

I’m writing an unauthorized autobiography.

I saw MotoGP on TV first, before I saw F1 and other types of car racing. It’s what I got more into. It was cool, there was good, exciting racing.

Regardless of what our national credit rating is, people will always want a roof over their heads, food on their tables, fuel for their cars, and clothes on their backs.

But just as they did in Philadelphia when they were writing the constitution, sooner or later, you’ve got to compromise. You’ve got to start making the compromises that arrive at a consensus and move the country forward.

I make pop culture.

I did this book ‚Harvest for Hope,‘ and I learned so much about food. And one thing I learned is that we have the guts not of a carnivore, but of an herbivore. Herbivore guts are very long because they have to get the last bit of nutrition out of leaves and things.

You make ‚em, I amuse ‚em.

Stand-up is my baby.

People don’t want drama 365 days a year. I’m a sense of relief; it’s my job to take your mind off what’s bad for that brief second you’re in the room with me, regardless of shape, race, colour or anything. It brings people together, and it makes me feel good about what I’m doing.

I’ve never eaten a strawberry in my life. I have no desire to do that.

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

Eating words has never given me indigestion.

I always thought Johnny Carson was just brilliant, and I used to watch him and all the comics that would be on the show every night – and I’d dream about it being me.

Is there a sharper commentary on American culture and the world than The Simpsons?

My opinion can be completely different after a show.

Movies were invented for Jimmy Cagney, and he was invented for the movies. A perfect match.

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.

Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me.

I love performing, you know, because, like I say, I’m a ham for this stuff.

For me, the way I stay consistent is through stand-up comedy.

Disneyland is a show.

I really like children to watch my movies.

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.

Most of the stuff I do on the show comes out of me just trying to make my friends laugh.

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

It’s not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on.

In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.