Padma Lakshmi Quotes

"It doesn't matter how precisely the onion is cut as long as the person chewing it is happy."

"I like me better naked. I don't mean that in a vain way... When you put clothes on, you immediately put a character on. Clothes are adjectives, they are indicators. When you don't have any clothes on, it's just you, raw, and you can't hide."

"I'm the kind of girl who thinks about what she's gonna cook for dinner when she's finishing her lunch."

"I'm not tough. I'm tenacious."

"The best thing you can do for someone is make them a beautiful plate of food. How else can you invade someone's body without actually touching them?"

"In truth, I am a single mother. But I don't feel alone at all in parenting my daughter. Krishna has a whole other side of her family who loves her, too. And so Krishna is parented by me, but also by her grandmother and aunts and cousins and uncles and friends."

"I tend to sleep in the nude... I'm a sensual-leaning woman. You have to use the word 'leaning' or it sounds like I'm boasting."

"I have great empathy for all the contestants that come on 'Top Chef,' whether they go home right away or they make it to the finish line. It's a very vulnerable position they put themselves in and I feel for them."

"Wine, like food, is so emotional. If you think about it, so much of the courting ritual is surrounded by wine and food. There's a built-in romance to wine."

"I love seafood. I'm not a vegetarian but I'm probably a pescetarian."

"I'm not attached to things at all. I'm very lucky to have quite a few beautiful things, but if I look back at my life, I was often happiest when I had very little."

"I was the first Indian model to have a career in Paris, Milan and New York."

"Where is it written that a smart woman can't also be stacked?"

"I've always had a fantasy to write a cookbook, because everyone wants to know what a model eats."

"I don't have any stigma attached to my body. When I'm in my own private space, I have very little on."

"I was lucky to have a successful career as a model, but that was just a way to pay off my college loans."

"The cookbooks and the writing in general have been a real bonus, but it's not something I've ever pursued... I've been lucky, I guess."

"For a while, I became an atheist; now that I'm grown up, though, I'm not hard-edged enough to be an atheist. Even though I live with a flaming atheist, I love going to temple. I love all the rituals."

"I love clothes, but really I don't have that much to say about skirts. Before I was writing, I went to fashion shows only when the designer was a good friend and I was there to show support."

"I'm not of the American ilk that, you know, your lover needs to be your best friend and know you inside out. I think he should know you well enough to please you. Otherwise, what secret will there be to tell him when you're ninety?"

"All chefs are like Jewish mothers. They want to feed you and feed you and impress you. It's an eagerness to please."

"I think wine is such a big universe that it's kind of like food - it's intimidating to a lot of people, myself included."

"If you like a wine that you drink, now with your phone, it's so easy. Just take a picture of the label. You learn about it. You learn where it comes from and what the soil is like and why you like it. And that'll lead you to another wine."

"Flowers die and wine gets consumed. Both are lovely. I appreciate both. Wine and roses. I actually had someone bring me a lobe of foie gras once."

"I've been a model for 15 years, and I've been on 'Top Chef' for eight seasons, and before that I had other cooking shows, so I've learned a thing or two about how to camouflage certain areas and how to draw the eye to a preferable area of the body."

"I usually doze off between 7:30 and 9 p.m. while putting my baby to sleep. Then I suddenly wake up remembering I'm an adult with no bedtime. I spend the next four hours catching up on reading, e-mails, and other adult pursuits until I collapse for good until sunrise."

"My mom was scared of the old Times Square so I was never allowed to go. Now I'm scared of the new Times Square, so I still never go."

"Every city has a Donald Trump; ours is just the Trumpiest."

"You don't want your jewelry to make you look fat. A lot of what's out there now does - you just wind up looking like a Christmas tree."

"Whether I'm making a recipe or a piece of jewelry or a white-rose-and-jasmine tea or the perfume, I like to think of myself as a happy little sorceress, and if I could just have a little general store with all that stuff and give people a sense of my taste, that would be lovely."