Top 15 Nigella Lawson Quotes

[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.

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

Everybody likes to think cooks are nurturing, but maybe we're just controlling – controlling what people eat.

As quoted by Nigel Slater regarding "OFM Best Food Personality 2014", The Guardian Archive.org (19 October 2014)

[O]besity 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.

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.

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.

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.

I lurch from chaos to chaos. I can’t find my driving licence and my clothes are everywhere – cooking is the neatest thing I do.

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.

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

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!

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.

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