“I cook, I create, I’m incredibly excited by what I do, I’ve still got a lot to achieve.”

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.

If I relaxed, if I took my foot off the gas, I would probably die.

Being a chef is the best job in the world.

Cooking today is a young man’s game, I don’t give a bollocks what anyone says.

I’ve always said that I think females make the best chefs anywhere in the world.

Eating out doesn’t have to be a formula. Eating out is about having fun. I get really frustrated when it’s badly done.

I’ve had a lot of success; I’ve had failures, so I learn from the failure.

Being a chef never seems like a job, it becomes a true passion.

I am the most unselfish chef in Britain today.

When you find a guy who is powerful, a big father figure, you latch onto him immediately.

I cook for a living; I’m not a scheduler.

One of the regrettable things in my life is that my dad was not around to see my stardom, to see me wrestle or to see what I achieved by the dream I had at an early age, influenced by where he would like to go.

Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are great only if they are determined to be so.

My dream was maybe someday, one night I can be a guest on a talk show, and then I will have achieved everything I want.

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.

I’m not in the Lifetime Achievement area yet-I’m still battling it out in the trenches.

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constant under torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph.

I never thought of becoming an actress, but I always dreamt of winning a beauty pageant, and I achieved that.