We sunk everything into it. It came close to going under several times.

And I like asking questions, to keep learning; people with big egos might not want to look unsure.

A lot of country pubs will receive Michelin stars.

It was not easy with a newborn, asking your wife to give up the family home and your security.

If it doesn't taste good it doesn't go on the menu.

I am not the world's most confident person.

But most is all to do with work. There are aspects of work that are enjoyable, that you could call a hobby.

Being branded number one restaurant in the world is actually very humbling.

You know how sad your life is when you know the release date of DVDs.

No, when I worked as an accountant I was falling asleep waiting for 5 o'clock.

What gets me excited is the original principle.

I've got around 400 cookbooks.

Television forces people to be larger than life. I would be too shy.

It was quite a challenge to make people eat crab ice cream.

I was determined that if I failed it wouldn't be due to lack of effort.

We sunk everything into it. It came close to going under several times.

I would try doing a dish 30 different ways.

We were saving, saving, saving then going to France and blowing the money eating. She was a nurse and had never experienced fine dining but she loved it, too. Our mates thought it absurd.

I have this desire to keep improving, so I find fault.

You need to do the work to bring the money in, but not compromise standards.

Now my complaint is there are only 18 hours to work in a day.

As we get older, we tend to become more risk averse because we tend to find reasons why things won't work. When you are a kid, you think everything is possible, and I think with creativity it is so important to keep that naivety.

I was born in the '60s and grew up in the '70s - not exactly the best decade for food in British history. It was horrendous. It was a time when, as a nation, we excelled in art and music and acting and photography and fashion - all creative skills... all apart from cooking.

I'm not scared of anything in particular, but I am motivated by a fear of failure as opposed to a need to succeed.

There are so many issues in our oceans - like the near extinction of blue fin tuna - that should be taken more seriously worldwide.

To me, food is as much about the moment, the occasion, the location and the company as it is about the taste.

You think about some of the most memorable meals you've ever had; the food will be good but it will often be about locating a mental memory and taste is inexorably linked to all the other senses and memory, so ultimately it is all about taste.

At the risk of being forgotten completely by the media, I went to college and pursued a passion that had nothing to do with acting: mathematics.

I've been wearing lipstick since I was in 7th grade. That was our form of daring self-expression, because we had to wear uniforms in school. It made our teachers so angry.

My grandmother had a great saying. It always stuck with me: 'People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.' They've got to see it and feel it. And it's for real. And that's all. Be who you are.

Earth is abundant with plentiful resources. Our practice of rationing resources through monetary control is no longer relevant and is counter-productive to our survival.

I've never been one to try to find a niche for myself. I've always tried to wait and see what comes.

I remember thinking, when I was playing Hedda Gabler, that several sequences of the play were utterly absurd.

I'm a born athlete. Weight-lifting is in my blood. I used to do the powerlifting thing. I gained a little weight, but I still got it; I'm mad built.

It's a very hard industry, and it's very cold. It's loving for when you have a hit record, but when you don't have anything going on, there's really not much support.

Don't ever in your life do a World Cup and the Olympic Games at the same time. This will make your life almost impossible.

I used to hate sampling, but it was basically because everyone was getting paid but us. But when they began to do the legislation and get it right, I realized that the kids just did something that, if maybe we were smart enough, we would have done it as well.

I really don't care who I fight.

Without pain, there would be no suffering, without suffering we would never learn from our mistakes. To make it right, pain and suffering is the key to all windows, without it, there is no way of life.

If you’re having a down time at school and people are bullying you, they don’t know you. They don’t have the right to have an opinion on you.

German is more familiar now since I live part of the year in Rome and part in the German part of Switzerland. But it's not difficult to sing in German; it's difficult to feel in German. This takes time. It's a culture.

When you think about the NASCAR brand, it resonates everywhere. They have the No. 1 sports brand.

The stopwatch doesn't lie. The tape measure doesn't lie.

Everybody wants their fame. They long for it, and I think they don't much care how they get it - to attract attention to themselves.

I never had a spirit-breaking, soul-destroying religion drummed into me.

Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. Nobody that matters, that is.

The only difference between Detroit and the Third World in terms of corruption is Detroit dont have no goats in the streets.

When people embrace character, there's latzie. It's the stuffing of a scene that's not written. It's not in the stage direction and it's not in the words. When people embrace character, it informs their living, breathing moments in a scene so well.

We have to be plumbers, electricians, construction engineers, or workers, on the space station, but at the same time running a laboratory, being scientists, being the best laboratory assistants we can be. It's all in a bundle; it's very exciting, it's a lot of fun.