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.

Why do people sit up so late, or, more rarely, get up so early? Not because the day is not long enough, but because they have no time in the day to themselves.

I have always liked running, so it wasn’t particularly difficult to make it a habit. All you need is a pair of running shoes and you can do it anywhere. It does not require anybody to do it with, and so I found the sport perfectly fits me as a person who tends to be independent and individualistic.

I have been told my eating habits are absolutely bizarre. But I don’t think so.

I began running on an everyday basis after I became a writer. As being a writer requires sitting at a desk for hours a day, without getting some exercise you’d quickly get out of shape and gain weight, I figured.

I cook, I create, I’m incredibly excited by what I do, I’ve still got a lot to achieve.

It is not more vacation we need – it is more vocation.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

When I’m in meetings until 5am and then have to get up two hours later for filming, sometimes I ask myself ‚why?‘

There is no time for cut-and-dried monotony. There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time!

If you’re working 50 hours a week to try to maintain family income, and your children have the kinds of aspirations that come from being flooded with television from age one, and associations have declined, people end up hopeless, even though they have every option.

I’ve always liked being busy. If I have nothing to do for a week, it just makes me mad.

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 do yoga, I do Bikram and I run, and I eat really healthy.

I’m just wanting to make the proper breakfast and keep the house. That’s my passion. At the request of my kids, I’m taking cooking classes. As I go to sleep at night, I think, ‚Did I do a great job as a mom, or was that an average day?‘

When I figured out how to work my grill, it was quite a moment. I discovered that summer is a completely different experience when you know how to grill.

I’m not trying to take New York by storm. I just want to sneak in there, keep my head down, batten down the hatches and cook.

I have loved to cook since I was a child in my mother’s kitchen. If I don’t have time to cook, I’ll just read a cookbook.

Running started as a way of relaxing. It’s the only time I have to myself. No phones or e-mails or faxes.

When you’re around kids you can be a little kid yourself and pretend that life is magic and you don’t have to be one of those sweaty people going to work every day.

I think a certain amount of stress in life is good. The stress of just working, which takes effort – I think it keeps you going.

I’m definitely looking forward to the day when I stop working – if I ever stop working. I like the idea of keeling over in my tomato vines in Sardinia or northern Italy.

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.

If you want to become a great chef, you have to work with great chefs. And that’s exactly what I did.

Even in New York, there are a lot of very attractive girls pedaling around. That just happens to be one of the nice sights in our city, seeing a young woman on a bike.

New York is definitely ready for the word of God.

My mother cooked like a scientist. She had a giant Chinese-style cleaver that she chopped with, and a cupboard full of spices.

Starting your own business isn’t just a job – it’s a way of life.

I love everything about my job, except being away from the kids.

I love my job, but it’s more than that: I need it.

Because my career is so important, I think I make a lot of – I wouldn’t call them sacrifices, but just concessions for my job. I love what I do, and I want to do it for a long time.

I just wanted to write something about running, but I realized that to write about my running is to write about my writing. It’s a parallel thing in me.

Big pay and little responsibility are circumstances seldom found together.

Cooking certain dishes, like roast pork, reminds me of my mother.

When I cook for my family on Christmas, I make feijoada, a South American dish of roasted and smoked meats like ham, pork, beef, lamb, and bacon – all served with black beans and rice. It’s festive but different.

The challenge of work-life balance is without question one of the most significant struggles faced by modern man.

I’m very type-A, and many things in my life are about control and domination, but eating should be a submissive experience, where you let down your guard and enjoy the ride.

I do not love to be printed on every occasion, much less to be dunned and teased by foreigners about mathematical things or to be thought by our own people to be trifling away my time about them when I should be about the king’s business.

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

I’m just someone who likes cooking and for whom sharing food is a form of expression.

I’m not an employee who goes to the office every morning at the same time. Then, vacations are needed.

My work and my family are very important to me.

I don’t do meetings.

I’m in a rare position where I don’t have to do job after job. I can take time when my family needs it.

People have a negative impression of New York that I don’t think is quite fair.

I want you to feel happy and enjoy the theatre of my life the way that I do. No matter what happens with my music and wherever I go – that heart of that glamorous girl in New York will never be gone.

Anyone who’s a chef, who loves food, ultimately knows that all that matters is: ‚Is it good? Does it give pleasure?‘

You can call me the bad boy chef all you want. I’m not going to freak out about it. I’m not that bad. I’m certainly not a boy, and it’s been a while since I’ve been a chef.

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it.

Moderation is the key so I work certain amount of time and then I take a certain amount of time off.

I run New York City!

I’ve said this time and again: My greatest concern coming into the White House was making sure my girls came out whole and normal, and decent and kind, just like I would expect them to if we were living on the South Side of Chicago. And it takes work to keep White House life normal for the kids.

I’ve never been a hands-on dad. I’m not ashamed to admit it, but you can’t run a restaurant and be home for tea at 4:30 and bath and change nappies.

Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

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

Another suggestion is to cook a meal, maybe not every night, but a couple more times a week than you usually do. That way you have leftovers, and you take your lunch to work.

If you’re going to wake up early all the time, and you’re working hard, and you’re working out, sometimes you’re going to get tired. It’s OK. It’s acceptable – somewhat. We’re all human, unfortunately.

Maybe there is no actual place called hell. Maybe hell is just having to listen to our grandparents breathe through their noses when they’re eating sandwiches.

Why should I stop working? If I do, I’ll die and it’ll all be finished.

Cooking today is a young man’s game, I don’t give a bollocks what anyone says.