Nigella Lawson Quotes

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.

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...

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.

Sometimes I think food preoccupies me too much. [...] The only thing that keeps me going at the theatre is thinking about what I'll eat afterwards, although now I bring sandwiches because I can't bear it

I always wanted to be called Caroline [...] Carolines were always very nice in books.

[A]ll food images, if they are successful, have the power to arouse appetite. They should be luscious and sexy. I have no embarrassment about the culinary come-on. But that's the limit of my erotic intent. I am always surprised when people read double entendres into my innocuous babble.

[Asked if cookery writing is a form of intimacy] I think there both is and isn't. I feel that writing about food allows one to be utterly honest, and personal, and in no way guarded. But, in some sense, it's a metaphor for the personal, rather than being actually personal. It's not revelatory, I would say. It's personal without being confessional. That's the kind of personal that I feel more comfortable with.

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.

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.

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.

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?"

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 - criticising my hair and stuff. I'm very self-conscious about it all.

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

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 spiralling into a Kathy Burke character and tried going out, but I prefer it here. Filming keeps me busy. It absorbs me.

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.