I've got nothing to hide.
— Gordon Ramsay
No one saw the recession coming.
You don't come into cooking to get rich.
When you find a guy who is powerful, a big father figure, you latch onto him immediately.
I've had a lot of success; I've had failures, so I learn from the failure.
I grew up in a funny way.
I don't think it's a good advert for any restaurant, a fat chef, and secondly, who wants to eat a dessert when the chef's a fat pig.
Chefs are nutters. They're all self-obsessed, delicate, dainty, insecure little souls and absolute psychopaths. Every last one of them.
If I can give you one strong piece of advice, when you go away for that romantic weekend, whatever you do, do not accept or take the upgrade to the honeymoon suite.
I mean, families are weird.
I'm not trying to take New York by storm. I just want to sneak in there, keep my head down, batten down the hatches and cook.
There is a level of snobbery and fickleness in L.A.
Cooking today is a young man's game, I don't give a bollocks what anyone says.
I didn't get depressed, I don't get depressed.
I am a grafter.
As a soccer player, I wanted an FA Cup winner's medal. As an actor you want an Oscar. As a chef it's three-Michelin's stars, there's no greater than that. So pushing yourself to the extreme creates a lot of pressure and a lot of excitement, and more importantly, it shows on the plate.
When you're a chef, you graze. You never get a chance to sit down and eat. They don't actually sit down and eat before you cook. So when I finish work, the first thing I'll do, and especially when I'm in New York, I'll go for a run. And I'll run 10 or 15k on my - and I run to gain my appetite.
I'm not critic-proof, and I still take it personally, but I take it less personally now.
I'd like to think I'm a great teacher.
I came up from a difficult background.
Find what's hot, find what's just opened and then look for the worst review of the week. There is so much to learn from watching a restaurant getting absolutely panned and having a bad experience. Go and see it for yourself.
I act on impulse and I go with my instincts.
I swim like a fish and I have an amazing kick.
The minute you start compromising for the sake of massaging somebody's ego, that's it, game over.
When you cook under pressure you trade perfection.
I am the most unselfish chef in Britain today.
They say cats have nine lives. I've had 12 already and I don't know how many more I'll have.
I'm Gordon Ramsay, for goodness sake: people know I'm volatile.
Kitchens are hard environments and they form incredibly strong characters.
I still love football, though, and I think cooking is like football. It's not a job, it's a passion. When you become good at it, it's a dream job and financially you need never to worry. Ever.
I suppose your security is your success and your key to success is your fine palate.
I am a chef who happens to appear on the telly, that's it.
The pressure on young chefs today is far greater than ever before in terms of social skills, marketing skills, cooking skills, personality and, more importantly, delivering on the plate. So you need to be strong. Physically fit. So my chefs get weighed every time they come into the kitchen.
I've never been a hands-on dad. I'm not ashamed to admit it, but you can't run a restaurant and be home for tea at 4:30 and bath and change nappies.
It's very hard when you eat out every day for a living, and a new restaurant comes along and you haven't got that same vigour that you had 10 years ago.
If you want to become a great chef, you have to work with great chefs. And that's exactly what I did.
I am what I am. A fighter.
I shoot from the hip.
My father was a swim teacher. We used to swim before school, swim after school.
Running started as a way of relaxing. It's the only time I have to myself. No phones or e-mails or faxes.
There's a bond among a kitchen staff, I think. You spend more time with your chef in the kitchen than you do with your own family.
Cooking is about passion, so it may look slightly temperamental in a way that it's too assertive to the naked eye.
I cook, I create, I'm incredibly excited by what I do, I've still got a lot to achieve.
You know how arrogant the French are - extraordinary.
I won't let people write anything they want to about me.
Would I swap what I have achieved as a cook if I could have been as successful as a footballer? Definitely.
I was a naturally aggressive left-back, a cut-throat tackler.
It's vulgar, coming from where I do, to talk about money.
I want my kids to see me as Dad, for God's sake, not a television personality.
I don't like looking back. I'm always constantly looking forward. I'm not the one to sort of sit and cry over spilt milk. I'm too busy looking for the next cow.
