The smells of slow cooking spread around the house and impart a unique warmth matched only by the flavour of the food.

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.

She ran out of her marriage the way a woman can run out of a pair of sandals when she decides to let go and really dash.

I deeply believe in pluralism. I believe in the close proximity of multiple systems or agnostic systems.

No matter what I do now, there are certain doors I have already closed, certain opportunities I'll never get back. There's nothing to be done, I guess. It is what it is.

I see everybody as pretty normal, ya' know? Except for the people that are normal; I think they're stranger than the people that are strange.

And whoever forces himself to love anybody begets a murderer in his own body.

It's always weird when I meet people who don't know how to crack crabs open and eat them the right way. I take a lot of pride in my crab-eating ability.

After the sleep of death we are to gather up our forces again with the incalculable results of this life, a crown of shame or glory upon our heads, and begin again on a new level of progress.

I collect clothes-they keep building and building. I buy them instead of having them washed.

I have described Swaraj as Ramarajya and Ramarajya is an impossibility unless we have thousands of Sitas.

The triple-double is just a stat. It's a test of your strength and stamina and playing ability, really.