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I really wouldn't want to live in America. I found New York claustrophobic and dirty. I missed England when I was there, simple things like smells and the British sense of humor.

America is a great country. I've been in the south, in the center and in the north. I like it. Americans are very good people. There's just too much air-conditioning.

I knew I couldn't live in America, and I wasn't ready to move to Europe, so I moved to an island off the coast of America - New York City... It was tolerant. It was a place that tolerated differences and could incorporate them and embrace them, which was what America was supposed to be about and wasn't.

Canada was for me very much Sweden, you know? Very much open people, that they read books, they go see films. I felt at home in Canada. And also, you speak French.

I am just as comfortable in Britain and France as I am in America... but nowhere is perfect.

I've been in Africa, America, moving around a lot. It's helped me to open up my mind. I was born in Jamaica; I've lived all my life there and got all I could from Jamaica. But I needed to be somewhere else to grow.

My mother was American, and my father was from the Caribbean, and there was a big open door into the world of humanity and music.

I always had a lot of fun in America, with much more freedom than if I had tried to cook in France. I wouldn't have the same motivation or inspiration, and I wouldn't have cooked for the same kind of people in France, so it wouldn't have given me this edge I had in America.

I didn't like England. I couldn't take the look of the place or the style of friendship. I need more intimacy from people than is considered okay there, and I felt that my personality and my enthusiasms weren't understood. I had to put a big lid on myself.