People From Leeds

"There is something very dry in family history, because no one cares for other people's relations."

"Nothing that has been and has died out, will be revived. The skeleton, an osseous Apollo, will remain, and that is all."

"I thought no one ever could paint a woman's eyes like Rossetti. There was a softness, a delicacy, a life, a soul in them, never seen elsewhere, but in living beings, and that how rarely!"

"A poem, of whatever length, should start vividly, so as to wind up the ear and set the mind ticking."

"I remember well the time when no gentleman was supposed to smoke; the habit was fit only for the vulgarian."

"If one looks back, one perceives that the majority of our poetic authors owed their success to patrons who made their works a fashion. Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, had noble or royal patrons; Milton there was no one to patronize, whence the market value of "Paradise Lost" rose only to ten pounds. Dryden belonged to the upper class, so he had a patron in himself; Pope was made a fashion through patronization: Bolingbroke alone would have sufficed to lift him up into fame."

"The more a writer deviates from simplicity, the less sincere he appears."

"... Mr. Nussey, the king's apothecary, ... whom I knew very intimately later in life, told me that the king confided to him all his secrets, and the knowledge, if written down, would set all England in a blaze. He was with the royal patient to the last, the king never letting go of his hand for twenty-four hours, which gave him an agony of cramp all but insupportable."

"Dr. Thomas Young, the illustrious inventor of the Undulatory Theory of Light, was then a physician at St. George's. I used to go round the wards with him. He was thought to be very undecided in his opinions of a case; the fact is, medicine is so uncertain a science, it was not good enough for such an intellect as his to work on."

"In those days, and long after, an English clergyman dressed like a gentleman; he now wears a black livery, and he looks like a bishop's footman, in mourning, with his master, for some dead archbishop."

"It is my purpose in writing these Memoirs to adhere rigidly to truth, at least in its essence. Should I succeed in this, my work would be a very remarkable one, almost unique."

"It may be boasted that free-trade in physic came before free-trade in corn, and from that time medical science began to flourish in this country."

"In many materials the electrical behavior changes from metallic to nonmetallic when the pressure, temperature or magnetic field is varied or (as in alloys) when the composition is varied, and the theoretical description of these processes is quite complicated. The interest of the problem lies perhaps mainly in our imperfect understanding of the nature of a metal. In the days before quantum mechanics, when I first attended undergraduate lectures on the electron theory of solids, it was taught that in metals one or more atoms from each electron were free, whereas in nonmetals they were somehow fixed to the atoms or ions or to the chemical bonds. The long mean free paths of electrons in metals extending over hundreds or thousands of atomic spacings were not understood, and neither was the absence of any large contribution from the electrons to the specific heat."

"... in terms of modern solid state physics, what does “transparent” mean? It means that, in the energy spectrum of the electrons in the material, there is a gap of forbidden energies between the occupied states (the valence band) and the empty states (the conduction band); light quanta corresponding to a visible wave-length do not have the energy needed to make electrons jump across it. This gap is quite a sophisticated concept, entirely dependent on quantum mechanics, and introduced for solids in the 1930’s by the pioneering work of Bloch, Peierls and A. H. Wilson. The theory was based on the assumption that the material was crystalline. ... my coworkers and I ... asked the question "how can glass be transparent?"."

"Any scientist, myself or another, can become so enamoured of his brain child that he resents criticism."

"The hypothesis that the electron has a magnetic moment was, as is well known, first introduced to account for the duplexity phenomena of atomic spectra. More recently, however, Dirac has succeeded in accounting for these same phenomena by the introduction of a modified wave equation, which conforms both to the principle of relativity and to the general transformation theory. Formally, at least, on the new theory also, the electron has a magnetic moment of εh/mc, but when the electron is in an atom we cannot observe this magnetic moment directly; we can only observe the moment of the whole atom, or, of course, the splitting of the spectral lines, which we may say is “caused” by this moment."

"Cooking should be a way of life—an extension of oneself—never a job."

"It is only by growing to know yourself that you do things for the right reasons and maybe have a chance to be really happy and realise your true potential as a person."

"When I made the decision to retire, I had three options. The first option was, I don't retire, I stay in the kitchen, I continue to work six or seven days a week, I kiss my children goodbye in their beds while they're sleeping in the morning and I kiss them goodnight when they're sleeping in their beds, but I retain my status and my position within my industry. My second option was to live a lie, to pretend I cook when I don't cook, question my integrity and everything I've worked for these 22 years, continue to charge high prices. My third option was to pluck up the courage, give back my stars and abdicate my position and reinvent myself as a person. Those were my options, and one Sunday morning I was fishing and it came to me. I was being judged by people who knew less than me. So what was it all worth?"

"Most chefs, unfortunately, cook by numbers. It doesn't come from within. Molecular cuisine is basically branding food. There's nothing new to it. Its foundation is still classical."

"Success is born out of arrogance."

"Most cooks when they are young tend to overwork their food to hide their lack of confidence and appreciation for Mother Nature. In time they learn that she is the true artist—we're just the the cooks."

"Great chefs have three things in common. The first is the understanding that mother nature is the true artist and they are the cook. The second is that everything they do becomes an extension of them as a person. Third, they give you insight into the world they came from, the world that inspired them. They show that off on their plates."

"Success is born out of luck. Luck is being given the opportunity, but it's awareness of mind that takes advantage of that opportunity."

"As far as I'm concerned, if someone is paying a huge amount of money to come to your restaurant and eat your food, then you have a duty to be in the kitchen."

"Apply the cook's brain and visualize that fried egg on the plate. Do you want it to be burned around the edges? Do you want to see craters on the egg white? Should the yolk look as if you’d need a hammer to break into it? The answer to all three questions should be no. Yet the majority of people still crack an egg and drop it into searingly hot oil or fat and continue to cook it on high heat. You need to insert earplugs to reduce the horrific volume of the sizzle. And the result, once served up in a pool of oil, is an inedible destruction of that great ingredient—the egg. Maybe that’s how you like it, in which case carry on serving your disgusting food."

"To start giving three stars straight away from year one makes you question Michelin and its value – they dish out stars like confetti now."

"It's very important to me that I share my story, and my knowledge and my philosophy. A story is more important than a recipe. A recipe can confuse you, but a story can inspire you."

"Cooking is a philosophy, it's not a recipe. Unless it's pastry, then it's chemistry."

"No, I didn't make Gordon Ramsay cry. He made himself cry. That was his choice to cry."

"Most of my reputation is a product of exaggeration and ignorance."

"Rudeness is not "having fun", and if it is, it's at the expense of another person."

"You can talk about fitness but the element people forget about and which has to come first is tenacity. You need that attitude and determination to commit to what you’re doing. It’s not always easy. That tenacity serves you well in races too. I do overload effort in training so when I get to races it all feels easier. I know if I am in pain others will be in pain too."

"Being an athlete, you have to consider whether your meals have enough of everything you need. As a vegetarian, you are forced to be creative, which I find makes me more adventurous with my cooking. Following a strict diet based on performance can be tedious, but because I enjoy the variety of my diet, it makes it easier to follow. … If any cyclists are thinking of becoming vegetarian, then I would suggest giving it a go. There’s definitely no harm in trying it! Be prepared to be experimental and open to new foods – you can’t just take out meat from your existing meals, you need to learn new ways of eating."

"I don't speak to him but his girlfriend is beautiful and I wish him well. We went through an experience together that was life-changing."

"Give me your body and let me love you like I do"

"I've known Zayn for a really long time, I think his voice is one of those that is really rare and I think he's really special and wonderful and it's really, really amazing to get to work together."

"(his answer to 'do you have a twin sister?) "He’s quite influential, that Rodger. He’s done a couple of songs on the new album. He’s off fishing today.""

"(on his newest iPhone) "I'm scrolling and scrolling and I’m, like, 'I have to stop,' but I can’t, so I delete the app from my phone. And download it again the next day or whatever.""

"And girl, you and I"

"If people talk behind your back, it's because you're ahead of them."

"(on "Someday My Prince Will Come" the Ashley Tisdale pop song) "Just because your prince hasn't come doesn't mean you're not a princess.""

"Before you judge someone else, judge yourself!"

"Join us next week... where interviewer will be eating fruit off my naked body.."

"(on Ashley Tisdale) "You don't need a prince to be a princess.""

"(on "I Don't Get Down Like That" the Swedish group Play pop song) "There comes a day when you realise turning the page is the best feeling in the world, because you realise there is so much more to the book than the page you were stuck on.""

"(if he's ever been in a 'romcom' or 'chick flick' before) "I think there’s a strength in expressing emotion. If you were a guy, you used to have to be really masculine, but now expressing emotion is accepted and respected.""

"(to Liam) "No, don't be sorry [for yourself]."

"I'd make Liam my slave and I would make him be my (uh) personal trainer!"

"I do recall one particular night shoot… We were called to the set at four o'clock in the afternoon. As usual, nothing was ready. They'd built a set of Tiberius's grotto, on three acres, and were assembling all of the extras and background. The producers worriedly asked if I would go into Peter's trailer (he was playing Tiberius) and go through the lines with him, which we did few times.And then he told me the most remarkable story – whether it is true or not I have no idea – about his grave-robbing Etruscan tombs. He said the best way to find Etruscan jewellery and artefacts was to find the drains in the tombs, and very gingerly sift through them with your fingers because, as the bodies decompose, all of the artifacts deposit themselves into the channels. The thought of Peter O'Toole on his hands and knees in an Etruscan catacomb makes for a lovely image.We spent hours and hours in this trailer. He was smoking … it certainly wasn't tobacco. By the time we got onto the set, 12 hours had passed. We couldn't believe our eyes: the set was covered with people engaging in every sexual perversion in the book. We were totally bemused.Peter would start off his speech, "Rome was but a city..." then pause, look around, and say to me: "Are they doing the Irish jig over there?" I'd look over and there would be two dwarves and an amputee dancing around some girls splayed out on a giant dildo. This went on quite a few times."