Quotes from Victoria Coren Mitchell

I can be a bit weird, cross when I'm cross, tired when I'm tired, and hungry when I'm hungry.

I don't know if I'm a writer who plays poker or a poker player who writes.

After a bath, we all love to dry off with a towel. But do we need it to survive? No. It's a luxury.

The best thing about universal free school meals is that they would remove one of the embarrassing signals, easily picked up by children's supersensitive antennae, of family poverty.

I'm familiar with that magical mindset during sporting competition where one feels completely zoned in on what's happening. There are occasional nights in poker when the mists have cleared, and I just know what my opponents' cards are. Everything at the table is slow, loud, and easy. The rest of the world is silent.

I'm convinced we go to school at the wrong time. I'd have been delighted, aged 12, to get out into the world and earn some money doing something menial.

Driving a car is no longer about zooming down clear lanes, the joy and freedom of the road flowing through your hair like a fine westerly breeze. It's about solid traffic, petrol fumes, spy cameras, eco-guilt, and simultaneous social media.

In 'The Pianist,' Polanski transformed his ghastly knowledge of the camps into an act of artistic self-expression.

I play poker, a game where there is no edge but the luck of the deal and the skill of the player.

Being bored by clothes shopping feels smart and intellectual: 'Ooh, get me, insufficiently entertained by racks of skinny jeans; my mind is on higher things.'

The Highway Code can't be that difficult to understand, and yet my brain seems to treat it as a set of nuclear fission instructions in Old Japanese.

I tried doing yoga to see if it would make me a more patient person, but I lost interest after about six minutes.

When I was 15, I still liked climbing trees and hiding in cupboards.

I like snow, but I don't want to live in Siberia.

Moisturise, moisturise, moisturise... is the motto of people who are in the business of selling moisturisers. Your body is already 60% water. If that's not moist enough for you, sit in a puddle.

The truth is, I feel sorry for the Old Etonians. Everybody should be judged on his or her own merits. Assuming that toffs are 'out of touch' is more modern and fashionable than assuming they have a 'natural fitness for government,' but it's no fairer.

I have a complicated relationship with the zoo; maybe everyone does. It's so wonderful and so sad.

London Zoo is amazing. I want to take my child there so that she can feel the awe and wonder I felt (and feel) myself.

I grew up near London Zoo, with which I was obsessed. I would lie in bed at night, thinking about the lions and tigers and wolves that were prowling only a few miles away.

Anyone who's tuned in to the House of Commons TV coverage knows the benches are often empty. I like that. I'm a big fan of political transparency. It's good for us to know which debates the MPs consider important enough to show up for, and which not.

They say multitasking is a female trait, but it's not about gender; it's about personality type.

The millions who watch 'Downton Abbey' do so neither relating to the Granthams nor hating them. It's an amused enjoyment of spectacle.

My speeding offences (whether caught or not) are always in situations where the speed limit is 30, but I think it's 40. And I'm never doing 40, always a careful 37.

When I met my husband, he had never spent more than £10 on a haircut.