Never has a material been as overrated as leather.
— James May
Look - think very hard about the car you want. Then buy that one, brand new.
I'm on television far too much. I'm not sure why. I've watched myself on TV from time to time. It's painful.
Some cyclists are complete prats, obviously, but so are some drivers.
The three of us may be reunited on screen, we may go our separate ways, or we may disappear from the television altogether and each assume a place, alone, in the corner of a pub where any unsuspecting passing drinker who strays into an exclusion zone studiously avoided by the locals will be subjected to a predictable 'I used to be on TV' routine.
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.
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 always wanted to be a teacher.
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.
It would be a bloody tough call to do 'Top Gear' without Jeremy. That would be a bit of a daft idea.
Our 'Top Gear' characters are based on our own characters, if exaggerated and cartoonified. We try not to be completely different to who we are, because you couldn't carry it off in the long run.
I suppose I could do 'The Reassembler' at 80. But it would be a terrible cliche.
I don't want Jeremy Clarkson anywhere near my shed or my toolbox or my piano. He's interested in fashionable restaurants and celebrity gossip - I'm not interested in those.
If it were possible - and I hope it will be some day - I'd like some sort of anti-gravity travel capsule: some way to travel around the without the need for jets and wings and so on.
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.
Not being part of the BBC with 'Top Gear' any more does pain me, because it's an organisation I approve of.
I'm not beholden to anyone. I'm not waiting for a pension or a carriage clock.
Nice girls at school whose fathers owned a Volvo were unapproachable and probably condemned to spinsterhood for all time, simply because no one had the courage to advance up the drive.
I always found it hard to motivate myself.
I've never quite trusted water; I don't think it's entirely healthy.
The bicycle might just be the greatest of all inventions. It empowers the human machine, and with no input beyond perhaps a trendy isotonic health drink in a brightly coloured bottle at an inflated price.
I hope we're not barred from Argentina - I'd quite like to go back for another ham and cheese sandwich.
It's actually very difficult to come up with a new name for something that hasn't already been bagged by someone else, unless you call your new show 'Shubbley-Doobley-Woobley' or something like that!
I'm only a freelance TV presenter and, in many ways, it's all just been a massive fluke.
I have never stormed off over money or contracts. I am paid quite well by 'Top Gear.' I am pretty happy, and I have never seen Richard Hammond storm off, either.
I hate the idea of people nicking my stuff, but in all honesty, I'm pretty well off. If a genuinely desperate man on his last gasp nicks my coat from the pub on a freezing night, well, he's welcome to it. It'll change his life. Mine's only inconvenienced by having to buy another one.
I don't like to think I am a celebrity; I am just a bloke on the telly.
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.'
You have to be a bit mad and conceited to go on television.
I think there are bigger problems in the world than Jeremy Clarkson.
I'm a big user of digital technology, but I don't find it beautiful.
I know there have been some catastrophically unpopular programmes on television over the years. Has it ever got to the point where the only person still interested in what's happening is the person who's on the telly?
It's fairly well known that we all hate each other to some extent. 'Top Gear' has worked because of a combination of camaraderie and mutual dislike. That's actually the magic.
I've never thought about marriage or children.
The V50 is a genuinely great car, even as a diesel.
I've never wanted to be on television for the sake of it, I suppose because I'm not one of life's natural presenters; I'm not an actor.
Bicycles should not be insured or registered, and cycling proficiency should not be subject to a test. That's just weak-kneed nonsense from people who believe the world can be cured with paperwork.
I love a bicycle, and I haven't been without at least one since I was three years old.
I'm quite happy to laugh at Argentina's obsession with ham and cheese, but not, you know, delicate bits of their history.
We'd become lazy with 'Top Gear,' doing six or seven shows a series.
I can't see Jeremy Clarkson having very many serious problems in his working life in the long run.
I don't have a worry about women because I keep reading that not only are they better at school, they are now better at parking, better at navigating... we know that women are good at everything.
Justice should not admit a public's thirst for pure revenge.
I think the astute viewer can recognise I am the proper bloke, because I have a toolbox and can put things back together, and I can quote W. B. Yeats and Alfred Lord Tennyson.
I don't look like Susan Boyle!
I am actually a perfectly capable modern man who can cook, clean, wash, and find my way to places, but nobody believes it.
Richard Hammond is a reasonably fit bloke who looks after himself. Me and Jeremy aren't.
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 shirt thing just started one day when I bought one with a really interesting pattern, and people laughed at it, so I thought, 'I'll keep buying daft shirts with flowers on.'
I always said it was a privilege to end up on the television. It wasn't my ambition; I fell into editing magazines and writing about cars, and then I ended up on the telly.
