Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I would have loved to have been science-minded enough to be in the caring profession - either as a doctor or nurse or vet.
I've learnt how to develop routines. To play with each bit. To enjoy expanding on it. To get used to the stage being mine.
I don't think anyone can listen to a Smiths song and not scream your lungs out in recognition of what it's like to feel odd.
Because I'm busy, I don't sit down to a lot of big formal meals - unless I've got mates round, in which case I'll cook something.
When it started, 'Bake Off' wasn't a big hit. Respect to the people who said, 'We'll keep commissioning this and give it a chance.'
I always like to think that I'm accountable for everything I do, but I'll never understand how I did some of the things that I did.
I always assumed that the reason I've never run a marathon is because I haven't bought a pair of shorts and arrived at the start line.
It was a privilege to experience life beyond the cliches and to witness the vibrancy, chaos, and multiculturalism of Bengal first hand.
I always want to have fun and be silly and be childish. I'm very childish. I am at my happiest when I am a child and I am just playing.
Food attracts a kind of nerdishness like any other sort of passion, and 'Cooks' Questions' is for those people who want to find out more.
As a child, I was awkward, fidgety, and shy, with a total inability to concentrate, and in that regard, I'm exactly the same as an adult.
The great thing about ageing is that your eyesight deteriorates at the same rate as your face. So I can't see how bad things are getting.
I have a freelancer's mentality: if I leave the country for more than 24 hours on a non-work trip, I believe I will never be employed again.
I am happier with my face since I started wearing glasses at 27, because they punctuate it. They also hide one of my biggest defects, my baggy eyes.
I was bookish and awkward and wanted a means of expressing the millions of emotions flying around inside me. The piano seemed as good an outlet as any.
Sometimes I get into the mindset that being heterosexual is a brave new world, because you can conceive, and you work out the rest of it once you're pregnant.
Performers only get to do their showing off because the public pay to see them. To deny your audience a photo, whatever the format, seems a little rude to me.
I sent an ex of mine an enormous oil painting of me as a housewarming gift. It was one of the most elaborate and time-consuming practical jokes I've ever done.
I don't really drink, but the one thing I really hanker after is Zubrowka vodka. If it's someone's birthday, I'll pretend I like red wine for about three sips.
By making the gay character funny and sweet but above all normal, you make a far better, longer lasting statement than you would if you had an entirely gay comedy.
I've always thrown myself into love in a rather carefree way, and the net result is that you do get hurt. But I wouldn't take away any of the experiences of my life.
Writing a memoir begins a process that doesn't necessarily end with publication. You begin to think about family life and stories and relationships, and those are ongoing.
My memoir is a story of family and childhood, and everyone has had one of those. Mine is not the definitive version of childhood, but it's a great way to start a conversation.
I like '24.' But I have to wait until it comes out, then watch it all in 24 hours. You really let yourself go in that one day; you just eat crisps and wander around madly ranting.
In Hebrew, the name Susan means 'graceful lily' - in Khmer, it means 'girl with the bad puns,' and in ancient Aztec, it translates as 'she with the cockerel hair and dirty glasses.'
I was an international krumper at one time. I can't talk about it, really, because when you've lived for krump like I have, when you get a bit older and you move away from it, it's hard.
You're never going to persuade a meat-eater to become a vegetarian on taste grounds. They're completely different. One is a cleaner, fresher taste: it hasn't got that bass-note beefiness.
I have slight attention-span issues, so I will often wander off, and then I will be alerted - in inverted commas - when the smoke alarm goes off. So that's how I work out if a bake is finished.
I'd like to live permanently in October 1988, when I started college. I had no responsibility and the energy to do whatever I wanted. My optimism wasn't dented by experience or low self-esteem.
I have an almost entirely written correspondence with a few friends of mine who are really busy. We exchange quite long and sometimes quite whimsical, sometimes quite meaningful, sometimes silly letters.
I made 'Heading Out' with a lot of love and surrounded myself with brilliant people who challenged me to do my best and also gave a great deal of love and support back. As a result, the experience was blissful.
You build up coming out to this horrible moment. It's so stressful, there's so much adrenaline, and there's so much primal fear - even though I know my parents to be good people - that they're going to reject you.
I usually like 'The Guardian' and its journalistic bent, but sometimes 'The Independent.' And if I'm being totally honest, some weekends I'll have a 'News of the Screws' or a 'Sunday Spurt.' You need high and lowbrow.
I don't understand people who travel purely gastronomically, who book a Michelin-starred restaurant three months in advance and suddenly find themselves in Copenhagen or Barcelona with a zeitgeist plate of snail porridge.
I'd never been one for leaving the comforts of home. That person wasn't me; I didn't spend my formative years youth-hostelling round Rwanda or climbing Everest in a tie-dye playsuit to raise awareness of something or other.
Before he died, my dad had three primary cancers over 20 years, and for four of those years, he was having chemo every day. We got used to sitting as a family at the table and him not to be able to taste what we were tasting.
A great conductor is an alchemical force: someone who can absorb the historical weight of a famous melody, the expectations of an audience, and the mercurial brilliance of a host of musicians, and shape them all to his or her interpretative ends.
I'm desperate to be in the same room as Katie Hopkins. There are a few things I'd like to say to her, really calmly. I'd just like to put forward a case for her to integrate the 'her' that she pretends to be on TV with the 'her' she is as a real person.
To those who say: 'Why pay for a gym when the outdoors is free?' I say this. In nature, there are no medicine balls. You can lie on an outsized gourd doing sit-ups, but in reality, outsized gourds are hard to come by unless you live in a farmers' market.
I have come to understand that my hatred of the gym was based on fear and prejudice, a tribal resistance to science, to improvement. But to ignore my aging physicality and not try and become the strongest and fittest I can be is curmudgeonly at best and wilfully ignorant at worst.
My dad was a keen philatelist and, when he died, he left me an album he'd curated over some 40 years. He'd handpicked every item, saying each one reminded him of me. I opened it to discover the pages were full of beige stamps bearing the image of George V. Take from that what you will.
As an adult, the obsessive dynamics of self-employment meant it was impossible for me to take a break. What would happen if I disappeared for a week or two? I would be forgotten. Forever. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity would, doubtless, present itself - and I would miss the chance to seize it.
I have a voice inside. A voice that I am forever trying to silence. A voice that calls me in when I want to be out, playing. A voice that is always sad. That is always terrified. That always wants to sit in the darkened room, away from noise and movement and colour - away from any experience that could prove to be challenging.