“The minute you start compromising for the sake of massaging somebody’s ego, that’s it, game over.”

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

Kitchens are hard environments and they form incredibly strong characters.

It’s vulgar, coming from where I do, to talk about money.

They say cats have nine lives. I’ve had 12 already and I don’t know how many more I’ll have.

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

The level of jealousy and insecurity in this industry [restaurant] is far greater than ever before.

I’d like to think I’m a great teacher.

I want my kids to see me as Dad, for God’s sake, not a television personality.

Put your head down and work hard. Never wait for things to happen, make them happen for yourself through hard graft and not giving up.

Chefs are nutters. They’re all self-obsessed, delicate, dainty, insecure little souls and absolute psychopaths. Every last one of them.

I don’t like looking back. I’m always constantly looking forward. I’m not the one to sort of sit and cry over spilt milk. I’m too busy looking for the next cow.

I think pressure’s healthy, and very few can handle it.

Cooking a dish is fine; cooking it under pressure is a completely different ballgame.

I don’t think it’s a good advert for any restaurant, a fat chef, and secondly, who wants to eat a dessert when the chef’s a fat pig.

We’re fragile, fragmented souls who are very sensitive to criticism.

Best to start at the bottom & gradually climb up. It’s much more fun, too.

I will not compromise on language or content. At 15, people can handle the same language as me, they’re just as complicated as me and are very interested in thinking about important questions for the first time.

Negotiating means getting the best of your opponent.

We didn’t see [the NBA lockout] as a victory at all.

Stay in the Word. The moment you start letting go of that, you’re on the road to compromise.

I oppose any course of action that would compromise these objectives.

It was far from what we set it out to accomplish in bargaining, but I thought it was a fair compromise.

We lack a political culture, a culture of compromise. We in Poland, as well as the Hungarians, have never learned this sort of thing.

We swear by the Quran and Sunnah, and we will not compromise with any infidel… Islam is the truth and all else is falsehood.