Nigella Lawson Quotes

30 Sourced Quotes

It's true that I wouldn't have written the first book had my sister and mother been alive. It was my way of continuing our conversation. It's also this Jewish thing of naming and remembering people, and I think there is a sense of keeping that side of life going.

Nigella Lawson
Food can comfort. But when you've just lost someone you love you don't want that to be the case. When my mother died some people came up to me and said, "You'll get over it." That felt like such an assault to me.

Nigella Lawson
I don't wear anything in bed. But I'm not ready for a nude scene quite yet.

Nigella Lawson
I lurch from chaos to chaos. I can't find my driving licence and my clothes are everywhere – cooking is the neatest thing I do.

Nigella Lawson
I don't take criticisms personally, which must be very annoying for people who mean them personally.

Nigella Lawson
Glamour really has to do with good lighting, doesn't it? And maintaining just the right distance. And my children see me as I am right now as I'm talking to you, in sweat pants and vest and no makeup.

Nigella Lawson
While I am sure there are a number of women who secretly wonder whether they are lesbian, most simply have, somewhere, a fantasy about having sex, in a non-defining, non-exclusive way, with other women.

Nigella Lawson
To me, sentimentality is a cheap and unfeeling substitute for true emotion. I think food is very much about emotion, personally and historically. It takes in happiness and unhappiness. It doesn't always play the role of being nurturing and benign, which is how we tend to think of it. It reflects every aspect of our lives and our personalities.

Nigella Lawson
It's like I can never watch myself on TV unless I have to do some editing before a show comes out. It's like hearing your voice back on a tape recorder and I'm sure you know how horrible that is. I always look for the worst things in myself - criticising my hair and stuff. I'm very self-conscious about it all.

Nigella Lawson
The thing I liked about writing about food when I started it was that I felt I was writing about food in a different way. Not like a food writer.

Nigella Lawson
I think cooking should be about fun and family. I'm not a trained chef. I don't pretend to be and I think part of my appeal is that my approach to cooking is really relaxed and not rigid. There are no rules in my kitchen.

Nigella Lawson
My sister lives in New York and she was struck by how class-ridden the reviews were. Everyone had to mention that I'm posh. British people are obsessed by that. I said to John, 'I'm not posh.' Is my voice posh?

Nigella Lawson
I am always surprised when people read double entendres into my innocuous babble.

Nigella Lawson
I am greedy. I eat under stress. When you are eating, the rest of the world is tuned out. And when you tune back in you feel guilty about having been greedy and the rest of the world is still there, so you have to carry on eating!

Nigella Lawson
I took a fortnight off. But I'm not a great believer in breaks. I don't want to be rattling around inside my own head. I did feel I was spiralling into a Kathy Burke character and tried going out, but I prefer it here. Filming keeps me busy. It absorbs me.

Nigella Lawson
Diets are like boyfriends—it never really works to go back to them.

Nigella Lawson
Pregnancy is the ultimate display of potency, just as potency, in another sense, is said to be the ultimate aphrodisiac. No wonder, then, that a private sexual act should be interpreted as the greatest public come on. Perhaps it's good to see that, even in politics, life insistently asserts itself.

Nigella Lawson
I used to refer to myself as Typhoid Mary. It wasn't that I was jinxed, I just seemed to bring ill fortune to anybody I was close to.

Nigella Lawson
I wouldn't have written about food if my mother and sister hadn't died because I would have had them to talk to. I'm not into the performance of cooking. It's a conversation for me.

Nigella Lawson
Some people did take the domestic goddess title literally rather than ironically. It was about the pleasures of feeling like one rather than actually being one.

Nigella Lawson
Cake baking has to be, however innocently, one of the great culinary scams: it implies effort, it implies domestic prowess; but believe me, it's easy.

Nigella Lawson
It's not meant to be flirtatious. Listen, I don't have a presenting style, I'm just me. I don't have the talent to adopt a different persona. It's intimate, not flirtatious.

Nigella Lawson
There are two Christmas traditions I've inherited from my mother. One is the feeling that Christmas isn't complete if you haven't got a ham as well as a turkey. It means that the leftovers are much better. And in a curious way, despite the fact that we're talking about Christmas and ham, it's a very Jewish thing to want to provide a huge spread. I always cook for eight, but make enough to feed 30...

Nigella Lawson
It wasn't really a chat show, it was a magazine show. I looked at it as a summer job. As long as no one makes me interview a celeb again, I'll be happy. It wasn't what I signed up for but, of course, nowadays everyone likes celebs. I'm pretty bored of them, though. I wasn't interested and couldn't be bothered to pretend I was.

Nigella Lawson
I was shy as a child. Now I'm not really shy any more, unless I'm with shy people. I find it contagious and I don't know what to say. But I don't think shyness is something one should feel apologetic about.

Nigella Lawson
But I do think that women who spend all their lives on a diet probably have a miserable sex life: if your body is the enemy, how can you relax and take pleasure? Everything is about control, rather than relaxing, about holding everything in.

Nigella Lawson
Cooking aside, I am what you'd call a domestic slut. Cooking is really the only domestic activity I enjoy. I would do anything not to do the normal bits of household work - it's not one of my strong points.

Nigella Lawson
... obesity isn't caused by those who adore food. People tend not to put on weight through eating meals. I'd say it's people who eat non-stop.

Nigella Lawson
You will cook the way you live, but the very important difference is that when you cook you have to leave your head and let your body take over.

Nigella Lawson
I think sometimes that people assume because I'm on television I'm an expert, but I think the whole point of what I do is that I'm not and I don't have any training. My approach isn't about a fancy ingredient or style. I cook what I love to eat.

Nigella Lawson