It doesn’t matter how much of a hurry you think you are in. Be one of the people for whom ten minutes does not make a difference.
GILES CORENPeople think you get paid millions by the BBC if you’re famous, but me? Me, I’m in the Premier Inn in Gillingham.
More Giles Coren Quotes
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I used to be so angry. I think back to my early days as a critic in the late 1990s, and I blush.
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I was 41 when I became a dad. I try to be as much fun as my father was, but I’m at home more – and less of a disciplinarian.
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The notion of getting pleasure from food has gone too far; we can also get pleasure from anticipating a meal, and from not being quite sated.
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The world’s most competitive man, my dad. Wouldn’t let us win at Monopoly… he wouldn’t cut any slack for his children.
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I used to be a very angry person, I used to throw things and break them. Then I had five years of constant psycho-analysis, and I don’t get angry any more.
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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 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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There is nothing wrong with getting a bus. Nothing in any way demeaning about boarding a huge smelly communal vehicle that will rumble noisily and very slowly in the vague direction of the place you need to get to and then dump you half a mile away in the freezing wind and rain.
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As a broadly left-wing, environmentally aware urban believer in anthropogenic global warming, I am all for a total ban on motor vehicles.
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My dad was very successful as a journalist, so I didn’t want to be one. I wanted to be a novelist.
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People think you get paid millions by the BBC if you’re famous, but me? Me, I’m in the Premier Inn in Gillingham.
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I think unionization of labour is a great thing.
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Gentile smoked salmon is all… muscular and smells of smoke. It’s not very fatty. They don’t understand – smoked salmon should be almost spreadable! So you give them the real stuff and they can’t believe how delicious it is.
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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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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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But still I can never shake the feeling that buses are somehow beneath me. Which is why I have a rule regarding their use: I never, ever run for one. And nor should you.
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When I write I inhabit a personality that is and is not me.
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How clever am I? I’m really quite clever. I mean, look, I’ve got a first-class degree from Oxford.
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I always say what I think to be amusing.
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Of course you can get a decent mouthful of food in New York. You can get a decent mouthful of food in Nairobi.
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In the beginning, we huddled in cities for our own protection.
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I would go swaggering into restaurants in some ridiculous tramp disguise, challenging them to mistreat me, order the things I was least likely to enjoy, then hurl my plate aside in a fury and demand to see the manager.
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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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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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