"The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is a conservative organization. I am a conservative. You can't get more conservative than being a conservationist. Our entire raison de etre is to conserve and protect. The radicals of the world are destroying our oceans and our forests, our wildlife and our freedom."

"Martin Luther King, Jr. once wrote that you cannot commit an act of violence against a non-sentient object. Back in 1986, the Green Party of Canada tried to toss me out of the Party for sinking whaling ships on the ground that it was a violent act. I pointed out that the Green Party of Canada supported violence when it was convenient politically — for example they supported and continue to support abortion which is, like it or not, a violent act, certainly more violent than sinking some metal into the sea. Violence is not violent when we justify it, be it abortion, or war, or eating meat for example. I support abortion but I'm not a hypocrite about it — it's violent, I accept that. Every American taxpayer accepts the violence that their tax-dollars fund."

"We cannot allow activism to be stifled because of all the paranoia going around."

"We have intelligent species on our planet that we are not even trying to communicate with."

"The oceans are dying."

"I don't eat fish because there is no such thing as sustainable fishing in the world right now."

"Intelligence is the ability of a species to live in harmony with its environment."

"We are pirates of compassion hunting down, hunting down and destroying pirates of profit."

"All of our targets were criminals, they were all operating in violation of international whaling laws."

"We're now in the midst of a 3rd World War, but this time the enemy is ourselves, and the objective is to save the planet FROM ourselves. There's no hope for masses of humanity to do anything — they never have, they never will. All social change comes from the passion and intervention of individuals or small groups of individuals. Slavery wasn't ended by any government or any institution. Women got the right to vote not because of any government. The civil rights movement, the same thing. India with Mahatma Gandhi, South Africa with Nelson Mandela. Again, it's always individuals. You need those individuals with the passion and the energy to get involved. In fact, I don't know of any government or any institutions that are doing anything to solve any of these problems. All over the world, all I am seeing is individuals and non-government organizations that are passionately involved in protecting ecosystems and species, and that's where I see some optimism. That's where I see results are happening."

"I think the problem is that we don't really understand what we are. In essence we're just a conceited, naked ape. But in our minds we're some sort of "divine legend", and we see ourselves as some sort of god. That we can walk around the earth deciding who will live and who will die and what will be destroyed and what will be saved. But the fact is we're just a bunch of primates out of control."

"I am unconcerned if people do not approve of this approach, but my position is: find a whale that disapproves of our actions and we might reconsider. We didn’t ram and sink those whaling ships for people. We did so for the whales. They are our clients."

"If you looked up 'multi-tasking' in the dictionary, the words 'Nigella Lawson' would probably appear alongside."

"Nigella Lawson – Britain’s only true "surname unnecessary" global celebrity since Princess Diana – is feeding everyone."

"She has flawless skin, perfect white teeth, a voluptuous body, ample height and lots of lush, brown hair. And then there are those cookbooks, which have become international best sellers. She has become enough of an icon stateside to be profiled last year in People and Vanity Fair."

"Her descriptions of food can be a tangle of adjectives."

"Lawson's sexy roundness mixed with her speed-demon technique, makes cooking dinner with Nigella look like a prelude to an orgy."

"Nigella inhabits a strange world of extremes: she has experienced extreme tragedy, extreme success and has the advantage of extreme beauty."

"No doubt there can be a shy, reserved side to Nigella Lawson - and some people interpret this as coldness - but it is not in evidence today. She seems flamboyant, if anything, and perhaps this is a persona she can slip in and out of (John Diamond once described her as 'a gay man trapped in a woman's body')."

"I have long been convinced that Nigella's iconic status has less to do with her abilities than a desire on the part of her admirers to invest in what she represents."

"[Asked if cookery writing is a form of intimacy] I think there both is and isn't. I feel that writing about food allows one to be utterly honest, and personal, and in no way guarded. But, in some sense, it's a metaphor for the personal, rather than being actually personal. It's not revelatory, I would say. It's personal without being confessional. That's the kind of personal that I feel more comfortable with."

"Sometimes I think food preoccupies me too much. [...] The only thing that keeps me going at the theatre is thinking about what I'll eat afterwards, although now I bring sandwiches because I can't bear it"

"Everybody likes to think cooks are nurturing, but maybe we're just controlling – controlling what people eat."

"As quoted by Nigel Slater regarding "OFM Best Food Personality 2014", The Guardian Archive.org (19 October 2014)"

"[O]besity isn’t caused by those who adore food. People tend not to put on weight through eating meals. I’d say it’s people who eat non-stop."

"It wasn't really a chat show, it was a magazine show. I looked at it as a summer job. As long as no one makes me interview a celeb again, I'll be happy. It wasn't what I signed up for but, of course, nowadays everyone likes celebs. I'm pretty bored of them, though. I wasn't interested and couldn't be bothered to pretend I was."

"It's not meant to be flirtatious. Listen, I don't have a presenting style, I'm just me. I don't have the talent to adopt a different persona. It's intimate, not flirtatious."

"But I do think that women who spend all their lives on a diet probably have a miserable sex life: if your body is the enemy, how can you relax and take pleasure? Everything is about control, rather than relaxing, about holding everything in."

"I lurch from chaos to chaos. I can’t find my driving licence and my clothes are everywhere – cooking is the neatest thing I do."

"Some people did take the domestic goddess title literally rather than ironically. It was about the pleasures of feeling like one rather than actually being one."

"I don't take criticisms personally, which must be very annoying for people who mean them personally."

"I am greedy. I eat under stress. When you are eating, the rest of the world is tuned out. And when you tune back in you feel guilty about having been greedy and the rest of the world is still there, so you have to carry on eating!"

"I was shy as a child. Now I'm not really shy any more, unless I'm with shy people. I find it contagious and I don't know what to say. But I don't think shyness is something one should feel apologetic about."

"I took a fortnight off. But I'm not a great believer in breaks. I don't want to be rattling around inside my own head. I did feel I was spiralling into a Kathy Burke character and tried going out, but I prefer it here. Filming keeps me busy. It absorbs me."

"I don't wear anything in bed. But I'm not ready for a nude scene quite yet."

"I always wanted to be called Caroline [...] Carolines were always very nice in books."

"I think sometimes that people assume because I'm on television I'm an expert, but I think the whole point of what I do is that I'm not and I don't have any training. [...] My approach isn't about a fancy ingredient or style. I cook what I love to eat."

"I think cooking should be about fun and family. [...] I'm not a trained chef. I don't pretend to be and I think part of my appeal is that my approach to cooking is really relaxed and not rigid. There are no rules in my kitchen."

"[A]ll food images, if they are successful, have the power to arouse appetite. They should be luscious and sexy. I have no embarrassment about the culinary come-on. But that's the limit of my erotic intent. I am always surprised when people read double entendres into my innocuous babble."

"It's like I can never watch myself on TV unless I have to do some editing before a show comes out. It's like hearing your voice back on a tape recorder and I'm sure you know how horrible that is. I always look for the worst things in myself - criticising my hair and stuff. I'm very self-conscious about it all."

"Cooking aside, I am what you'd call a domestic slut. Cooking is really the only domestic activity I enjoy. I would do anything not to do the normal bits of household work - it's not one of my strong points."

"I used to refer to myself as Typhoid Mary. It wasn't that I was jinxed, I just seemed to bring ill fortune to anybody I was close to."

"The thing I liked about writing about food when I started it was that I felt I was writing about food in a different way. Not like a food writer."

"It’s true that I wouldn’t have written the first book had my sister and mother been alive. It was my way of continuing our conversation. It's also this Jewish thing of naming and remembering people, and I think there is a sense of keeping that side of life going."

"My sister lives in New York and she was struck by how class-ridden the reviews were. Everyone had to mention that I'm posh. British people are obsessed by that. I said to John, 'I'm not posh.' Is my voice posh?""

"While I am sure there are a number of women who secretly wonder whether they are lesbian, most simply have, somewhere, a fantasy about having sex, in a non-defining, non-exclusive way, with other women."

"There are two Christmas traditions I've inherited from my mother. One is the feeling that Christmas isn't complete if you haven't got a ham as well as a turkey. It means that the leftovers are much better. And in a curious way, despite the fact that we're talking about Christmas and ham, it's a very Jewish thing to want to provide a huge spread. I always cook for eight, but make enough to feed 30..."

"The trouble with modern cooking is that the mood it induces in the cook is one of skin-of-the-teeth efficiency, all briskness and little pleasure."

"The children should never be excluded from what I am doing and should never have the feeling of being part of an audience."

"Keeshan made no secret of his distate for most TV shows … Keeshan argued that violent cartoons and the crime dramas that kids could easily see were no more reflective of reality than his beloved Treasure House."