I always preferred my father's pasta the next day, when he'd put it in a hot oven with heaps of extra cheese. It would emerge slightly burned and very crisp on top.

Pasta with melted cheese is the one thing I could eat over and over again.

Brunch, for me, is an extended breakfast that should be enjoyed whenever you have time properly to engage in cooking and eating.

A well-made salad must have a certain uniformity; it should make perfect sense for those ingredients to share a bowl.

The combination of olive oil, garlic and lemon juice lifts the spirits in winter.

Breakfast is always the best time for something juicy, sweet and fresh - it just feels like the right way to open the day. There's no right way, though, when it comes to choosing the fruit.

Mothers and grandmothers: these are the people that I admire most, not so much chefs.

Just-poached vegetables show off their natural attributes, and taste fresh and light in a way you never get with roasting or frying.

Date syrup is a natural sweetener that has wonderful richness and treacly depth; I drizzle it over semolina porridge.

The way to entice people into cooking is to cook delicious things.

For me, the end of childhood came when the number of candles on my birthday cake no longer reflected my age, around 19 or 20. From then on, each candle came to represent an entire decade.

Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.

I grew up like a neglected weed - ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it.

I'm 48 now and whatever I get music-wise, I get from my kids and that's it. I don't think I'll ever be hip again!

It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.

The number is less than that of 2004, but major fatal accidents have aroused considerable public discontent.

Could distance in one direction differ from distance in another? It's always faster coming home.

I've kind of always done diagrams. It helped me think.

A lot of people think that fame is the Band-Aid that cures their ills. I'm no kid, and I knew long before I got famous that wasn't the deal. I'm the court jester, not the queen.

All the posters on the walls All the leaflets in the streets Are mutilated, destroyed or run in rain, Their words blotted out with tears, Skins peeling from their bodies In the victorious hurricane.

I studied movies for many years, but I am professionally an actor because I, my background is actually a stage actor and acting.