Mario Batali Quotes

My father left school at 14 and became a fitter. He didn't want to be at school.

And that had a powerful appeal, particularly to those who had been denied the choice to stay on at school, to go to university, to be something else, other than going down the pit.

In Britain, the idea one could go from blue-collar beginnings to the university was so far out, it was quite unthinkable. I took a variety of jobs to pay for tuition - from ice-cream salesman to night-club bouncer. Whatever earned the most money in the least time.

My father had not even completed high school when he started as an office boy working for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, and I am not sure that my mother completed high school.

The only other thing that interested me as a kid was being a bricklayer. So if I hadn't become an actress, I would probably be a bricklayer.

I used to be a longshoreman. I didn't go to college. I have a voice that when I say something, it can sound way meaner than you think it is.

My mom says I either have to go to college or go into the military.

I did a bunch of blue-collar jobs, because I knew I'd wind up with a white-collar job at some point, and I wanted to, I don't know, I just wanted to taste life. I dug graves for a while, I worked as a stock boy in a big department store, I worked in a bank.

Growing up on a farm, I saw that if I didn't go to the military or go to school, and I knew my mom and my family wasn't going to be able to send me to school out of their pocket, so it basically came down to athletics. I knew I didn't want to work on a farm. I knew I didn't want to do manual labor the rest of my life.

When I swapped studying for a wage and a proper job, Mam and Dad were devastated. I was rejecting an opportunity they never had. But their eldest son, at 16, wanted only to follow his father down the pit. It was to be the biggest education of my life.

It's difficult to say what I would be doing if I wasn't a footballer, but I probably would have sold coal like my father. Studying was never my thing, and I would surely have ended up working with my dad.

After college, I spent a decade working the kinds of jobs that I write about - bartender, shoe salesman, kitchen man - while voraciously reading novels.

You can go to war at 18, so you should be able to make a living at 18, especially if college isn't what you see for yourself.

My father is a taxi driver, and my mother ran a small business. I hadn't even met a barrister before I got my first shot at the legal profession. But back then, I was lucky enough to be given a break - I can't help but wonder if I would be so lucky today.

I hope for little girls and boys that there is a future where they can make choices about how they raise their family and what sort of career they have, which is based on what they want and what makes them happy.

I don't know where horse riding could have taken me, and it's something I can always go back to when I've retired from football, but the crossroads came in my life when Chelsea wanted to sign me and make me a professional footballer in 2013 when I was 20.

I wasn't the brightest button in the class at school, but I enjoyed cooking and baking. I wasn't clever enough at Maths O-level to get onto the cookery teaching course I really wanted to do, so I did a catering course instead.

I'm one hundred percent into my life, and into my fighting career. This is who I want to be in the future - as a mother - and if I'm going to leave the sport, I leave the sport. When I finish with fighting, I'm done.

I knew I wanted to do music, but leaving such a successful career one would think I'd kind of shot myself in the foot. I knew I made the right decision, and at the end of the day it's up to me to get where I want to go, but it's a lot to take on.

I come from a blue collar background.

Where I'm from, you focus on finishing school. Even finishing college is seen as a stretch - you just get a job after school, and that's it.

My parents never went to college. My dad started as an hourly worker.

Growing up with a parent in the army, I saw firsthand the challenges our service members face when transitioning to new jobs after time in the military.

American servicemembers receive the best training in the world. They deserve to get credit for that when they leave the military, continue their education, and start careers.

When I finished my degree I became a physics and maths teacher. And worked in the international school in Brussels, because like many kids, after University I went home going 'ahhh I don't know what to do'. I happened to fall upon a job there because they were desperate for a physics teacher which is a common theme among many schools.