Padma Lakshmi Quotes & Sayings

Hearing doctors tell you that you can't get pregnant does not extinguish the hope. — Padma Lakshmi

Every country I would go to, even if it was just on a modeling job, I would go to their markets. If I went to Morocco for 'Elle' magazine, I would be in the spice markets during my off time and just come back with a suitcase full of stuff that I really wanted to try. — Padma Lakshmi

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

Auguste Escoffier into what we now know as the five mother sauces of French cuisine. It's funny — Padma Lakshmi

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? — Padma Lakshmi

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. — Padma Lakshmi

She raised her hand, bony fingers spread. "Don't worry. She is supposed to cry. Her life will never be the same. You can't give her everything."

I realized what Rajima meant. Until that moment, I had been almost exclusively providing everything Krishna could want or need. I was her sole succor and haven. But her needs were changing. She would now need sustenance from the earth, from Mother Nature, from the world, or at least Whole Foods. She would need more than what I could give her from my own body. We — Padma Lakshmi

DON'T wear loud clanging bangles at work, it's disruptive and noisy and your coworkers won't appreciate it! Bangles should have a gentle wind-chimey tinkle, not the crash bang of a million pots and pans. — Padma Lakshmi

The men on the show have it easy, in part because men on TV have uniforms: There's the jacket, in black, blue, or gray. There's the shirt, the pants. I can never tell whether Tom is gaining or losing weight beneath his boxy suits. He always looks the same. Tom also has the benefit of being Tom, a decorated veteran of the restaurant kitchen. Like so many chefs, he is practiced at the taste-of-this, taste-of-that eating regimen. I'm the one who has to look like a glorified weathergirl, with formfitting dresses and all, which, don't get me wrong, I love - at least until I don't. — Padma Lakshmi

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

Women's voices not being heard is the root of many of the problems of the world, — Padma Lakshmi

Where is it written that a smart woman can't also be stacked? — Padma Lakshmi

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. — Padma Lakshmi

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

Like many immigrants, I had always kept my Eastern and Western lives compartmentalized. — Padma Lakshmi

Maybe that old adage about not being able to have a good apartment, a good relationship, and a good job at the same time is true. — Padma Lakshmi

Decide which you want to play up: your clothing or your jewelry, but not both. Let one be the star and one the supporting player. — Padma Lakshmi

I don't really think any of us are women right when we turn eighteen, or even twenty-one for that matter. You have to live a little. I certainly tried to do that. — Padma Lakshmi

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. — Padma Lakshmi

In southern Spain, they made me eat a bull's testicles. They were really garlicky, which I don't like. I prefer to take a bull by the horns, not by, um ... — Padma Lakshmi

For a long time, I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was desperate to find something that fit me and I just decided that if I could organically make a professional living out of the things that interested me, then I would be a happy person. — Padma Lakshmi

The great thing about living today is that there is this thing called the Interweb, and you can just look up anything. — Padma Lakshmi

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? — Padma Lakshmi

Part of my job as a food writer is to describe food. So my work on 'Top Chef,' I feel, is an extension of that. When we give a criticism to the contestant, we want to make sure we tell them why it's not working and why it would work if they did it a different way. — Padma Lakshmi

I once asked her if she was happy. "That depends on what I am able to get done today," she said, laughing. She told me that the completion of her daily tasks was the only thing she felt she had control over. They were a form of meditation, of salve. Kept busy, she had no time to ruminate and no time for opinions, certainly not feminist ones. I pressed her: "I mean, are you happy with your life, Rajima?" "I don't know," she said uncomfortably, as if she'd never really considered such a question. "When there is little you can do, you do what you can." Happiness for my grandmother seemed to be a verb rather than a noun. She had so little control over her own life. Yet she took control, out of thin air for herself, when she could. — Padma Lakshmi

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. — Padma Lakshmi

He was everything I wasn't. He was a lot of what I wanted to be. — Padma Lakshmi

Commitment is easy before a relationship requires compromise and obligation. — Padma Lakshmi

I cannot remember what we talked about except that we never stopped talking. — Padma Lakshmi

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

Beauty is no accomplishment on its own. It's what you do with it. — Padma Lakshmi

You don't need expensive classes and all kinds of weird equipment if you really want to be in shape. There are great ways to do it that are very economical, it just takes a time commitment, even if it means waking up a half hour a day before the rest of the household gets up because that's the only time you have. — Padma Lakshmi

we eat for our stomachs, but we hunger with our hearts. — Padma Lakshmi

My first taste memory is pickle. Even as a kid, I was really weird. I liked chillis. I used to climb up the shelves in my grandmother's pantry. The pickle jar was kept right at the top. One time, I dropped the jar and it broke. I was totally busted. — Padma Lakshmi

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. — Padma Lakshmi

She had so little control over her own life. Yet she took control, out of thin air for herself, when she could. I — Padma Lakshmi

People are thrown off by someone who looks feminine, but is also strong. It's not that pretty girls aren't smart, it's that women aren't strong. — Padma Lakshmi

Perhaps I didn't voice my unhappiness soon enough; rather, I spent more time feeling like a disappointment and scrambling to patch our cracks than I did considering whether he required an unreasonable level of tending. — Padma Lakshmi

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. — Padma Lakshmi

At the end of a marriage, no one wins. There is only anger, sorrow, guilt, emptiness, and defeat. — Padma Lakshmi

At first, I was grateful to be the object of such intense desire. Yet what's flattering in the first year can be suffocating in the eighth. — Padma Lakshmi

I'm an immigrant kid who came to America from India when I was very young and grew up in New York City with a single mom and really was influenced by all of those immigrant cultures bumping up against each other. — Padma Lakshmi

I didn't know what the future held in store for me, but I felt hopeful. — Padma Lakshmi

Teddy taught me about kindness, about love that is unconditional; a sentiment not dependent on acceptance, approval, or the expectation of something in return. It was the first time I would ever feel this from a man who wasn't my grandfather. And I didn't know what to do with it at all. If only I'd embraced our differences sooner. I didn't know it then, but we had so little time left. — Padma Lakshmi

I wasn't like those girls who give birth and are back on the runway. It took me probably six months to gain 45 pounds and I would say it took me double that time to lose it. — Padma Lakshmi

I've always thought the back is one of the most beautiful parts of a woman. I've created four versions of the front-to-back necklace which actually gives you two necklaces in one. I love the way they swing and catch the light as a woman is walking away. You almost want to pull on it and stop her! — Padma Lakshmi

went from hoping things would work out to seeing that they were working out. I am actually doing this, I thought. Maybe I'm not just flying by the seat of my pants. I didn't want to be passive anymore, personally or professionally. In that moment, I came into being as my real and present professional self. — Padma Lakshmi

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

Simply being born female in our society is to grow up being told your worth as a person is tied to how slim and attractive you are. Even for those of us lucky enough to have evolved parents, the message is still driven home by the world at large. — Padma Lakshmi

I grew up a vegetarian. Then, because I grew up in the states, I started slowly eating meat. First it was bologna sandwiches, or pepperoni on pizza. — Padma Lakshmi

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

An oil massage, a hot bath, a good night's sleep, soft smells and music and clothes with soft textures denote sensuality to me. — Padma Lakshmi

Cooking was something women did to nourish and nurture their families, whereas for men it was largely something they did professionally to gain money and status. — Padma Lakshmi

Once in a while we burned a wok trying to make our churan, and Jima, Bhanu, or another matriarch would banish us from the kitchen. "You should've told us," they'd say. "We would've helped you." You're not getting it, Neela and I thought. This is our party and you're not invited. To this day, the elder women of my household in Chennai still regard Neela or me with suspicion whenever we enter the kitchen to make anything other than tea. No matter that I host a cooking show or that Neela has raised two healthy daughters who clearly haven't starved or been disfigured by a kitchen accident. — Padma Lakshmi

experienced a bout of atheism. With adolescent self-importance, I wondered why God would allow all this to happen to a fourteen-year-old girl. When — Padma Lakshmi

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. — Padma Lakshmi

I know most people use their phones to tell time, but there's something very romantic and beautiful about a timepiece. — Padma Lakshmi

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. — Padma Lakshmi

Love and passion begat marriage in my world. Yet in my grandparents' world, marriage began with practicality. My grandfather told me proudly of that day he first met my grandmother. He interviewed her, posing little riddles to test her common sense. "Supposing you have to take the children to school and you're late and it's supposed to rain," he said. "Would you take a taxi or a bus?" My grandmother said, "Well, first I'd take an umbrella." Ice cream in Central Park, this was not. — Padma Lakshmi

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. — Padma Lakshmi

And so I was left with a mantra, a sort of haiku version of our relationship: I don't regret one day I spent with him, nor did I leave a moment too soon. — Padma Lakshmi

food has played a central role not only in my professional but also in my emotional life, in all of my dealings with loved ones and most of all in my relationship to myself and my body. I am what feeds me. And how I feed myself at any given moment says a lot about what I'm going through or what I need. I don't believe I am alone. Yes, we eat for our stomachs, but we hunger with our hearts. Like most people and many women, I think about what to eat all the time. I am constantly plotting my next meal, planning how and what I will shop for, and ever hatching new plans to avoid the foods I know will undermine my well-being. Foods are like men: some are good, some are bad, and some are okay only in small doses. But most should be tried at least once. — Padma Lakshmi

I could worry about his health but somehow not about my own. We throw ourselves away a little each day. — Padma Lakshmi

Every city has a Donald Trump; ours is just the Trumpiest. — Padma Lakshmi

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. — Padma Lakshmi

I didn't wholly identify with the collective experiences of children in either place. I had one foot in each culture, but no firm footing in either of them. At — Padma Lakshmi

I always thought that what Rajima did with those cast-off peels was a metaphor for how she dealt with her arranged marriage. She transformed those peels, with palm sugar for sweetness and tamarind for tang, into something precious. — Padma Lakshmi

I work out all the time! I don't just sit around and eat burgers whenever I want. Oh, if I could I probably would, but I don't. — Padma Lakshmi

People always comment about my clothes. They don't think a fashionable woman can love food and be knowledgeable and actually cook. — Padma Lakshmi

I never Tweet about my daughter. Never. I just want to be respectful of her privacy. My job as a mom is to know when to open my mouth and when not to. — Padma Lakshmi

One thing that happens when you're pregnant is that as your stomach starts to stretch. It itches! So I have to keep my belly really lubricated. Every morning, there's a buttering ceremony after I get out of the shower. It's really like basting a turkey with body butter. — Padma Lakshmi

She had sculpted the mist, the way those who have no choice do. She had willed a life for the two of us in a new land. — Padma Lakshmi

In the morning stillness, when the world is just waking up and your conscious mind hasn't fully taken over, you may feel a connection or passageway to another world, and a feeling that something is about to happen in yours. It's like a quiet storm is coming. You can feel the distant rumble of thunder on the horizon, yet you have no idea of the deluge your life is about to experience. — Padma Lakshmi

I always loved my bangles, I can't remember a time when I didn't have a bangle on. — Padma Lakshmi

I think eating in itself is the act of great sensuality, so all you have to do is point the camera in the right direction. — Padma Lakshmi

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. — Padma Lakshmi

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. — Padma Lakshmi

Back then, eating was also a means of beautification, since the more aloo tikki and murukku you consumed, the more likely you'd reach a voluptuousness akin to an American size ten or twelve, required for looking good in a sari. — Padma Lakshmi

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. — Padma Lakshmi

I love seafood. I'm not a vegetarian but I'm probably a pescetarian. — Padma Lakshmi

I really like to sometimes go into food detox and eat very simply. — Padma Lakshmi

The heart knows no pain sharper than love's arrow. — Padma Lakshmi

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. — Padma Lakshmi

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. — Padma Lakshmi

I am as omnivorous as it's possible to be. I always say there's nothing I won't eat and nothing I won't wear. — Padma Lakshmi

My grandfather was a closet feminist. So, — Padma Lakshmi

During the course of filming 'Top Chef,' I gain 15 lbs., so I'm used to needing two dress sizes. — Padma Lakshmi

the more brutal or austere the diet, the harder it is to keep. — Padma Lakshmi

When there is little you can do, you do what you can. — Padma Lakshmi

I am a sufferer of endometriosis. I didn't want any young women to go through what I went through. I thought that people should know about it. — Padma Lakshmi

But now I was home. In my home, home home, once and for all. I had had various apartments before in quite a few cities over the course of my life, but this was the first one I owned, and it felt good. A roof over my head and a place to be private, to cry, to laugh, to gorge, to hope, to dream, to wallow, and to pray for things was a salve to my soul. — Padma Lakshmi

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. — Padma Lakshmi

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

I always think, after the second glass of wine, you should be putting something in your stomach. — Padma Lakshmi

From the simple stringing together of lemon garlands for the goddess Durga, to dividing the prasadam or blessed foods for the children first, I came to associate food not only with feminity, but also with purity and divinity. — Padma Lakshmi

Every woman has a record of her body - a closet full of jeans and bras of various sizes, albums full of photographs revealing periods of weight gain and loss. — Padma Lakshmi

Jewelry should not upstage you. I pick one hot point on my body that I'm going to highlight. Let one area do the singing - you don't want to hear three songs at once. — Padma Lakshmi

The close proximity in which people lived in India was in stark contrast to my independent existence in America. — Padma Lakshmi

I think a great classic watch is the first staple every woman should invest in. — Padma Lakshmi

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. — Padma Lakshmi