My time in Paris was an education in both the grimness of a relentless, grinding day job and the joys of nights in glittering restaurants.
GILES CORENWorld cross-fertilization is fantastic. Immigration across the world has led to all kinds of fantastic new and exciting kinds of food being available. And there’s all kinds of different kinds of restaurants.
More Giles Coren Quotes
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All I care about is that people who like me think I’m funny. I get on with writing pretty straight-down the line, old-fashioned stuff.
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The good fortune of my life, which has been to turn those glittering nights into my job, all came from there.
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When I write I inhabit a personality that is and is not me.
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I tried to leave the city once, for one of those other places. And, my God, the silence. I could hear myself think, and found that I wasn’t. I am not designed to be lonely as a cloud.
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Not since Ancient Greece have cities been thought of as the ideal living environment for humans. And that was so long ago it predates the invention of trousers.
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I had become mean and stupid and deliberately hurtful because that is what is expected of restaurant critics. Of critics in general.
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The way I write possibly shouldn’t be turned on serious things.
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Instant gratification is bringing this planet to its knees.
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I know more than most journalists. I know more than most columnists on big, important newspapers.
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The first thing I remember is that my dad had a big iron Olivetti typewriter and he worked all night.
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So what on Earth there isn’t to like about New York? I don’t know. But what you do also have is a load of very ordinary restaurants which you make a terrible fuss about which are really only very average. Which is fine. One doesn’t go to New York for the food.
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I have quite good general knowledge and I had a very drilled education from an early age. I do know more than most people.
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Have you ever been to the countryside? It’s so small. And there’s nothing to do.
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At home, we have fish and greens, fish and greens – maybe salmon steak with curried lentils. No poncy cooking goes on, we don’t have dinner parties, we don’t entertain.
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My dad never really wrote what he thought. None of his inner rage and darkness and problems, which we all have, made it on to the page. For him, writing was a process of making everything appear funny.
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My sister’s also very, very competitive but she is more concerned than I am with being liked. So she hides it away. I try to make my competitiveness part of my charm.
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I always say what I think to be amusing.
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People like me make modern life intolerable.
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I come from a country where there’s a reputation for bad press.
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I have a tailor now, I have a doctor, a wine merchant, a jeweller, a gardener, a cleaner, and a nanny. It was clearly ridiculous that I did not have a hairdresser. So I got one.
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I think unionization of labour is a great thing.
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Mineral water is a preposterous vanity, either bottled in glass which is stupidly heavy to freight, or in plastic that ends up in one of the plastic patches the size of Texas occupying our oceans.
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In the beginning, we huddled in cities for our own protection.
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My dad is the best and funniest newspaper columnist. There is nobody anywhere near as good.
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A man of strong opinions is one thing. But a man whose strong opinions depend entirely on how he is feeling in that instant is a disastrous thing in a city of 10 million people just trying to muddle through.
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I’m not a mad, crazy foodie. But I have strong opinions and I know a lot about food.
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