"Posh does not equal style. Really, God, that's just ridiculous. Posh equals tradition. Anyone can achieve style. It doesn't matter who you are or where you're from."

"Trinny and Susannah are what they are — there's no fakery."

"Susannah has become less of a Sloane Ranger and more into real life. She’s also more career-minded."

"By the end of the interview, I pluck up the courage to ask Susannah whether she thinks my bra fits. She stares at my chest: "You’re wearing a 34C and you should be in a 32DD." I get home and check. She’s right."

"Susannah ... is on the right side of voluptuous and more laid-back. She loses things likes credit cards and keys."

"You just don't expect posh girls to grab your tits, call your trousers "too clitty" and use words like "pussy pelmet" but they do. You are so shocked by what they are saying that by the time you have recovered and thought of something to say they have whipped you out of your jeans and eased you into a Lycra cat suit."

"Susannah at home is quite the opposite to Trinny... Susannah has a big rambling house and there's dogs and there's kids and there's nannies, and you can come over anytime you like, and if you can have supper she'll throw it together in a minute. It's easy, it's fabulous to be around her."

"“…reminds us why these two well-dressed, slightly chaotic, posh ladies are so entertaining”"

"In my case I slob around in old clothes in the country. But I have the luxury of knowing I can pull myself out of that. So I don't feel bad about looking like shit."

"Generally speaking Scottish women are pretty good. Look at Sharleen Spiteri and Lulu — you've got two fabulously well-dressed women in different ways."

"We've created a range of clothing which is almost like a prescription from the doctor. Our clothes do the same thing. If you're not happy with your bum, then there's a coat that's going to hide it. If you want to create a waist, there's a dress that's going to do that for you too. We've designed it very much around the female body.""

"Our primary concern is not to be style icons ourselves."

"Too fat, too thin, what the fuck are you supposed to be? God bless the media!"

"I did have Botox once and I felt like I'd had a stroke. It was so claustrophobic."

"I had one little glimpse in the mirror and it was like an electric shock. Horrifying. It took me three or four days to get over it. On air, the plastic surgeon said: "Would you have anything done?" Oh no, I said. "Do you smoke?" No, never. Soon as the camera was off I took his card and had a cigarette."

"Ultimately, what we're doing is giving people confidence. We're probably the only people who have an opinion, who care how ordinary people dress. No one at Vogue magazine gives a shit. They work with the designers, it's more creative and artistic — they are creating something beautiful. But they don't care about how their readers end up looking — whereas we do!"

"It is a myth that style can't be learnt. It's all about dressing for your body shape, following the rules and wearing colours that suit your skin tone."

"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."

"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')."

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

"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."

"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."