Quotes from James May

I very briefly had a microwave oven that I quickly gave away, because I could never work out what they do better than a regular oven.

I'm a great believer in the principle of try it and work it out. If a gadget is designed well, you can easily work out how to use it. But if you can't, it isn't shameful to read the instructions.

The Amazon lot are perfectly reasonable, level-headed people who just want to make TV programmes. I don't think they are the enemy of the BBC or the other way round. It's not a war; these things can coexist. We can have Amazon and Netflix and the BBC and BT Sport, and people can make choices. That's what modern life is all about.

Richard Hammond is a reasonably fit bloke who looks after himself. Me and Jeremy aren't.

I'm conflicted because I like being in deserts. I find them sort of cleansing, but there's another part of me that hates dust. And I particularly hate dust in cars, so it's a huge conflict going on there.

It does cost a lot of money to make high-quality TV in exotic locations. I know everyone thinks we've been given a massive sack full of money and gone off and bought Lamborghinis and gone off for lunch, but it isn't actually like that.

I'm not very ambitious, sorry... I don't get up and think, 'Today, I shall achieve greatness.' It's more, 'Today I might have Marmite on my toast.'

Someone once told me that I was 12 inside. The only thing 12-year-olds crave is more Lego. Lego is fun; it's therapeutic. It's a beautiful sensation when you click the pieces together.

Modern man is in crisis. He has degenerated from the redoubtable pillar he became through centuries of refinement and slipped resignedly into the popular depiction of himself as a witless under-achiever, incapable of looking after himself or those around him.

I can't make a house homely. My house just looks like a garage or a shed. I'm not untidy, but it just looks so uninviting.

'Top Gear''s popularity is a complete mystery to me. Maybe it's because it's still a car programme, but it's turned into a distorted world view from three men; a world view through the windscreen.

The decline of practical skills, some of them very day-to-day, among a generation of British men is very worrying. They can't put up a shelf, wire a plug, countersink a screw, iron a shirt. They believe it's endearing and cute to be useless, whereas I think it's boring, and everyone's getting sick of it.

The greatest luxury now in being reasonably well-off - overlooking the Ferrari and the aeroplane - is that I can always go for a curry without worrying if I can afford it.

All cars have a natural gait, a speed at which they're happiest. The Corniche is perfect at around 65-70mph. I did a ton in it once, which was completely horrible. Apparently, it'll reach 120mph, but not with me in it.

In 'Top Gear,' everything goes wrong because you have Jeremy Clarkson, so any practical activity ends in a pile of bits.

I find the history of toys very interesting on an academic level - they're very much products of their time, just like paintings and furniture tell us about their time.

There are all sorts of things embodied in the Lego brick - geometry and mathematics and truth and proportion and shape and colour... It is a faintly spiritual activity that everybody connects with.

Deep down inside, I am lazy.

I've got a new pair of trainers. That's the only difference in my life since I started working for Amazon.

I think any carmaker that had a brain and was looking very long-term would think about 'Personalised Transport Solutions' - which may not be a car.

Jeremy can't do anything. I've never discovered anything he can do. I mean, he can drive a car round a track pretty well, but he wouldn't be able to light a fire.

I think there are bigger problems in the world than Jeremy Clarkson.

It would be a bloody tough call to do 'Top Gear' without Jeremy. That would be a bit of a daft idea.

I remember thinking, at the end of 2015 on New Year's Eve, I'm actually quite glad to see the back of that one. 2015 was a bit complicated and had some very traumatic bits in it.