Nigella Lawson

I don't like conflict.

Then again, they're not scripted and I feel it's virtually impossible to be anything but yourself when you're in front of the cameras and cooking so there is a measure of truth in what you see.

I was a quiet teenager, introverted, full of angst.

There is a vast difference between how things seem from the outside and how they feel on the inside.

There is something wrong about being photographed that has nothing to do with vanity.

I can understand why those primitive desert people think a camera steals their soul. It is unnatural to see yourself from the outside.

At some stages of your life you will deal with things and at others you are overwhelmed with misery and anxiety.

It sounds like something on a very trite T-shirt, but life is what happens.

I think maybe when you live with someone who is really very ill for a long time, it somehow gives you more of a greedy appetite for life and maybe, yes, you are less measured in your behaviour than you would otherwise be.

You need a balance in life between dealing with what's going on inside and not being so absorbed in yourself that it takes over.

I wasn't good with authority, went to lots of schools, didn't like the fact that there was no autonomy.

Also, in a funny way, if you have been happily married there are no unresolved areas, nothing to prove to yourself after the other dies.