Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Not being part of the BBC with 'Top Gear' any more does pain me, because it's an organisation I approve of.
I'm on television far too much. I'm not sure why. I've watched myself on TV from time to time. It's painful.
We've always liked the word 'chump', and it's quite nearly our initials - Clarkson, Hammond, and May Productions.
In 'Top Gear,' everything goes wrong because you have Jeremy Clarkson, so any practical activity ends in a pile of bits.
I'm quite happy to laugh at Argentina's obsession with ham and cheese, but not, you know, delicate bits of their history.
In 1988, before I'd written a word for a car magazine or stood in front of a camera, I was a subeditor on 'The Engineer.'
Men think that not being able to wire a plug somehow makes them more creative or intellectual. It just makes them morons.
I can't make a house homely. My house just looks like a garage or a shed. I'm not untidy, but it just looks so uninviting.
I am actually a perfectly capable modern man who can cook, clean, wash, and find my way to places, but nobody believes it.
I got into it just thinking, 'Oh, television, maybe I'll have a go at that.' I could've never imagined that it would get to this.
As more consumers demand less sugar, the food and beverage manufacturers will eventually come into line with what the consumers want.
I very briefly had a microwave oven that I quickly gave away, because I could never work out what they do better than a regular oven.
I've never wanted to be on television for the sake of it, I suppose because I'm not one of life's natural presenters; I'm not an actor.
When we were kids, if somebody said, 'What did you watch last night?' you would have said, 'BBC Two,' but now they'll just say, 'My mobile.'
I woke up one morning and realised that one of the problems with being a middle-aged man - of being a man in general - is the tyranny of fashion.
I think any carmaker that had a brain and was looking very long-term would think about 'Personalised Transport Solutions' - which may not be a car.
I'm not very ambitious, sorry... I don't get up and think, 'Today, I shall achieve greatness.' It's more, 'Today I might have Marmite on my toast.'
Jeremy Clarkson wants to become a farmer - he's bought a field - Hammond wants to open a supermarket, and I'd like to spend my days owning a shoe shop.
I have never stormed off over money or contracts. I am paid quite well by 'Top Gear.' I am pretty happy, and I have never seen Richard Hammond storm off, either.
Jeremy can't do anything. I've never discovered anything he can do. I mean, he can drive a car round a track pretty well, but he wouldn't be able to light a fire.
The reality is that we do not have an air traffic control system that is smart enough and technologically capable enough to be able to handle that kind of demand.
Boilersuits are used by everybody from pilots in the army to racing drivers to people who clean your drains. The one piece overall is what all males secretly desire.
I find the history of toys very interesting on an academic level - they're very much products of their time, just like paintings and furniture tell us about their time.
The greatest luxury now in being reasonably well-off - overlooking the Ferrari and the aeroplane - is that I can always go for a curry without worrying if I can afford it.
I always said it was a privilege to end up on the television. It wasn't my ambition; I fell into editing magazines and writing about cars, and then I ended up on the telly.
I don't want Jeremy Clarkson anywhere near my shed or my toolbox or my piano. He's interested in fashionable restaurants and celebrity gossip - I'm not interested in those.
It's fairly well known that we all hate each other to some extent. 'Top Gear' has worked because of a combination of camaraderie and mutual dislike. That's actually the magic.
I think the astute viewer can recognise I am the proper bloke, because I have a toolbox and can put things back together, and I can quote W. B. Yeats and Alfred Lord Tennyson.
The shirt thing just started one day when I bought one with a really interesting pattern, and people laughed at it, so I thought, 'I'll keep buying daft shirts with flowers on.'
I remember thinking, at the end of 2015 on New Year's Eve, I'm actually quite glad to see the back of that one. 2015 was a bit complicated and had some very traumatic bits in it.
There are very few things in real life on which I agree with Jeremy Clarkson, surprisingly few for people who have to make a TV show together. But that's part of what makes it work.
If it were possible - and I hope it will be some day - I'd like some sort of anti-gravity travel capsule: some way to travel around the without the need for jets and wings and so on.
Someone once told me that I was 12 inside. The only thing 12-year-olds crave is more Lego. Lego is fun; it's therapeutic. It's a beautiful sensation when you click the pieces together.
Nice girls at school whose fathers owned a Volvo were unapproachable and probably condemned to spinsterhood for all time, simply because no one had the courage to advance up the drive.
I don't have a worry about women because I keep reading that not only are they better at school, they are now better at parking, better at navigating... we know that women are good at everything.
When it comes to watches, it's ironic that you can spend thousands on an exquisitely made mechanical watch, and yet it will be less accurate than a five-quid digital bought from a petrol station.
I'm a great believer in the principle of try it and work it out. If a gadget is designed well, you can easily work out how to use it. But if you can't, it isn't shameful to read the instructions.
Our 'Top Gear' characters are based on our own characters, if exaggerated and cartoonified. We try not to be completely different to who we are, because you couldn't carry it off in the long run.
'Top Gear''s popularity is a complete mystery to me. Maybe it's because it's still a car programme, but it's turned into a distorted world view from three men; a world view through the windscreen.
Bicycles should not be insured or registered, and cycling proficiency should not be subject to a test. That's just weak-kneed nonsense from people who believe the world can be cured with paperwork.
There are all sorts of things embodied in the Lego brick - geometry and mathematics and truth and proportion and shape and colour... It is a faintly spiritual activity that everybody connects with.
I'm conflicted because I like being in deserts. I find them sort of cleansing, but there's another part of me that hates dust. And I particularly hate dust in cars, so it's a huge conflict going on there.
The bicycle might just be the greatest of all inventions. It empowers the human machine, and with no input beyond perhaps a trendy isotonic health drink in a brightly coloured bottle at an inflated price.
I'm in favour of the old roles being blurred. The old division at school where the boys did metalwork and woodwork and the girls did needlework and domestic science is awful, really - and I'm glad it's gone.
I was a car journalist when I started on 'Top Gear.' It was all about cars. And then it all spun out of all control, and we turned into figures of ridicule to keep the viewers happy. It's a fair deal, I suppose.
I know there have been some catastrophically unpopular programmes on television over the years. Has it ever got to the point where the only person still interested in what's happening is the person who's on the telly?
All cars have a natural gait, a speed at which they're happiest. The Corniche is perfect at around 65-70mph. I did a ton in it once, which was completely horrible. Apparently, it'll reach 120mph, but not with me in it.
It does cost a lot of money to make high-quality TV in exotic locations. I know everyone thinks we've been given a massive sack full of money and gone off and bought Lamborghinis and gone off for lunch, but it isn't actually like that.
Despite some of the stories that have gone around, I've never had a big, flouncey strop about how much I'm paid. Considering I have a pretty interesting life out of making telly, I'm really paid quite well for it. So I'm not complaining.
Modern man is in crisis. He has degenerated from the redoubtable pillar he became through centuries of refinement and slipped resignedly into the popular depiction of himself as a witless under-achiever, incapable of looking after himself or those around him.