Toby Young Quotes

19 quotes in 391 categories

• Top Chef is a very smooth-running machine. All the people working there are incredibly professional and absolutely at the top of their game.
• People in London think of London as the center of the world, whereas New Yorkers think the world ends three miles outside of Manhattan.
• I wouldn't describe myself as a master of anything.
• In Britain, by contrast, we still think that class plays a part in determining a person's life chances, so we're less inclined to celebrate success…
• I really like the Observer. I think I'd love to have a column with a broad reach that would enable me to do some proper…
• I've become a professional failure - in order to pay the mortgage I have to remain unemployed. Luckily, a disaster always seems to befall me…
• I've never been to a shrink. But my parents were very psychologically literate - my father had undergone Freudian analysis - and we often talked…
• I was once hired to write a column for 'The Guardian' and then got fired before I'd submitted my first one. That was unusual. Most…
• I miss being fawned over by restaurateurs and chefs.
• America thinks of itself as a meritocracy, so people have more respect for success and more contempt for failure.
• I tried being a mechanic and I tried catering, but I realized I had even less aptitude for semi-skilled labour than for academic work.
• Oddly, I do have a problem with authority. I find it very difficult to knuckle down and follow rules. Which are the classic symptoms of…
• I think I've been wishing for celebrity for so long that I've got used to being someone who's petitioning the establishment for acceptance... my whole…
• It's very different doing a food show in America and doing one in Britain. I did a 20-part series for the BBC series called 'Eating…
• My life's ambition is to play a James Bond villain. I have the cat and the eye-patch, so I'm just waiting for the call. For…
• The moment I'm perceived to be even a tiny bit successful, my career will go down the pan.
• There's no reason why you can't deliver a grammar-school curriculum to an all-ability intake.
• You know when you tell a self-deprecating story at a dinner party, everyone's laughing along with you? But then when someone else repeats that same…
• I expect that in 40 years' time I'll be writing political tomes and working for an organisation like Oxfam.

Browse Toby Young Quotes by Category