Quotes from Giles Coren

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.

I had become mean and stupid and deliberately hurtful because that is what is expected of restaurant critics. Of critics in general.

World 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.

I come from a country where there's a reputation for bad press.

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.

When I write I inhabit a personality that is and is not me.

I used to be so angry. I think back to my early days as a critic in the late 1990s, and I blush. 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.

The world's most competitive man, my dad. Wouldn't let us win at Monopoly... he wouldn't cut any slack for his children. 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.

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.

I sleep nine hours every night, I have a little nap after lunch, and, if I'm going out for dinner, I sneak in an extra one before I head out.

Instant gratification is bringing this planet to its knees.

I think unionization of labour is a great thing.

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.

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. The good fortune of my life, which has been to turn those glittering nights into my job, all came from there.

I always feel quite Jewish but I used to deny it until I was in my twenties.

People like me make modern life intolerable.

The first thing I remember is that my dad had a big iron Olivetti typewriter and he worked all night. He was a staffer at Punch but in the evening he wrote columns for the Evening Standard and The Times.

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.

My dad is the best and funniest newspaper columnist. There is nobody anywhere near as good.

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.

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.

My dad was very successful as a journalist, so I didn't want to be one. I wanted to be a novelist.

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.

I'm not a mad, crazy foodie. But I have strong opinions and I know a lot about food.