Quotes from Sophie Dahl

Modelling is a bit baffling when you're 18. I just thought, 'Brilliant - I get paid lots of money to walk down a runway.' I didn't think I was signing up to be a poster girl for anything.

It's nice being married to someone who likes to read because you can indulge in geeky conversations about books.

I've got to confess... I do feel slightly like I've been born in the wrong time.

My family is as complicated as the next family. We have our joys and our tragedies, and we bear both with a black humour that is in our genes.

When I write about things, it's a lot to do with sense memory. How things smell and taste can bring incredible memories flooding back and transport you in an instant to another time and place.

The problem with life is, we often do things that will ultimately be self-destructive and make us unhappy, yet in that moment it seems like the best idea in the world. You have to be careful of moments - they're tricksy things.

In secret places we can think and imagine, we can feel angry or sad in peace. There is something to be said for just being, without worrying about offending anyone.

I think it doesn't really make a difference where she is, because she always takes herself with her.

It's so easy to fetishise the dead. We rose-tint or villainise them, and so often in the retelling they are saints or sinners, rather than flawed humans muddling along like the rest of us.

None of the sample sizes ever fit me at the photo shoots. One would think that would've made me want to lose weight, but I just got rounder.

So much for the myth that motherhood is all Laura Ashley smocks and skipping through fields. People think it's rose-tinted and they don't tell the truth!

To my detriment I'm quite rosy-visioned about the idea of love. It's slightly embarrassing but it's part of who I am.

I know part of nostalgia is romanticising the past, but I love doing things in a slower way, and the glamour of bygone eras.

I do love cooking, but our kitchen is nothing fancy or hi-tech.

My younger sister, Clover arrived three days before my seventh birthday and I wanted to sell her. I'd had my mother, stepfather, and nanny Maureen, all to myself, and suddenly there was this bonny baby with green grass eyes that everyone adored.

When you meet someone who really sees you, it gives you the emotional freedom to pursue your dreams.

I get asked about my weight endlessly. There is no story. It doesn't merit so much talk.

The most evocative food smell is American seaside food - tuna melts and cookie dough ice cream, or the British version, fish and chips and toffee apples.

I would never have got involved in something that just meant turning up at eight and leaving at five.

On my raw food diet, my skin shone bright like a gilded deity and my eyes glowed in a somewhat unearthly manner.

I have become that middle-aged woman who listens to the 'Hamilton' soundtrack in my kitchen.

I can't eat at all when I get sad; all I want is soup and easy-to-swallow baby food and, of all things, jelly babies.

When I was at school I wanted to be a writer and an actress. Then this whole modelling thing happened.

I remember being home alone when I was about 13 and making a souffle from a recipe in one of my mother's old cookbooks. I approached it in a very unafraid way, and produced a rather beautiful one.