Top 99 Quotes & Sayings by Melissa Leong

Our shelves are groaning with the amount of cookbooks, it's scary.

To be considered part of the fashion zeitgeist is fun, but it will never steal my focus from my qualifications as a food writer, presenter and communicator.

I think as a kid, you just want to be accepted by the people around you and largely I was.

Knowing how much was sacrificed to give me the opportunity to find the thing that lights me up isn't lost on me, and it's something I know a lot of people can relate to, whether their parents arrived here in Australia recently or not.

I am flattered that so many people have resonated with my style and that beauty and fashion standards in the media continue to grow in their inclusivity and reflection of the real world.

Country town to the city heart, in every corner of the globe you'll find a Chinatown, a Chinese restaurant or an Asian grocer. From this vast and ancient culture, we credit noodles, dumplings, rice, countless spices and cooking techniques to have enriched every culture that they've landed in.

I don't really like being asked how I feel about being a 'household name.'

To be a white man calling out racism is important.

I always set out to be open-minded and open-hearted in everything I do.

There's no point in sanitising your past. I believe everybody deserves to evolve and change their perspectives. To be human is an ongoing process.

As a ghost writer, many words I have written have been for someone else.

I think it's important to be vulnerable and to pay attention to your emotions.

For me, a big part of anxiety and depression was not knowing how to say 'no' and wanting to please too many people... part of this process is learning to draw the line and slow down.

No matter where you live in the world, the contribution that Chinese migration has had on food culture is undeniable.

I've been mentored by editors who encouraged me to be constructive and never cruel.

Eating matzo ball soup for the first time was akin to a religious experience because of how deeply contemplative it was. It made me realise that something as simple as chicken soup - in any culture or religion, or through any perspective - can be very symbolic, nourishing and meaningful.

Mental health is not a novelty; it's part of who we are and we need to treat it as if it were a broken arm or any other kind of medical consideration.

I always want to celebrate inclusivity wherever I can.

When you think about a post-swim snack at the local pool, you'd be forgiven for thinking ham and cheese toasties, finger buns and red frogs before cassava fries, arepas and Latin tunes.

I am very proud of my family and my heritage and my history, and I'm also proud of my own achievements.

Whether your job puts you in the public eye or not, being able to leave your work at work and come home to a different pace of life seems to me not only logical, but sustainable.

As Australian palates continue to be curious and enquiring, so does the variety and regional specificity of cuisine options.

In these increasingly self-focused times, emotional connection through food remains perhaps more than ever, the vital glue that holds us together or helps us reconnect with something we lost.

The symbolism of certain foods trip the nostalgic wire in all of us, whether the context is cultural heritage or geographic location.

If there's somewhere that in no way resembles Eastern Europe, it's Australia.

I'm a big believer in digging deep when I travel to a new place.

Everybody deserves to be seen and to be heard. Regardless of whether that is your culture, your language, who you love, your ability, or the way you chose to live your life, everybody deserves to be seen and be heard.

I always want to be - and appear to be - competent. When I don't achieve that, I don't respond well.

I believe in spirituality more than I believe in religion. But I like the idea of there being something bigger than us. What that is, I can't say for sure.

Asking people about their first food memories can be illuminating.

Dad was a draughtsman; he's now retired. Mum was a nurse who spent a lot of her time in ER and oncology. She's such a compassionate, generous person. If I was meeting her on the worst day of my life, I'd be very grateful to have met her.

I do love fashion as a mode of self expression, and I appreciate it for being wearable art.

I am a huge fan of so many Indian regions and dishes, but if I had to pick one, as simple as it is, 'dal' will always have my heart.

It's amazing that you can use your own body weight to exercise, and it's something everyone can do with no need for a huge budget.

I would have these massive eating sessions with my chef friends where we'd go out for a whole day and eat all of the things, and it never occurred to me once that all of my friends are dudes who are six-foot-something or 150 kilos. I would just match them to the toe.

The great thing about discovering all the food treasures that Box Hill has to offer is that most of them are packed into an area small enough to wrap your arms around.

You don't have to follow every recipe to the letter.

British cookbook author Elizabeth David led the most adventurous life but is widely credited with bringing to the fore the importance of home cooking.

Singaporeans are food people, period. My first memories, let alone of food, were of sitting on the floor of the kitchen with my mother, watching her pound aromatics to make sambal and later on, learning to stuff wonton pastry.

I live a very straight forward life and my job is public, my life isn't. That's a very clear delineation I've made from the beginning and will always tread that line.

In Australia, Chinese food culture has imparted flavour, dimension and excitement to the way we eat.

It seems like our first food memories, no matter how unpleasant, often end up making their way into our hearts anyway.

A key feature of Macedonia's protein dishes is the mix of meat, so you'll often find a stew of pork and chicken, for example, rather than a singular beast.

When you go through things like burnout you learn what to do and what not to do in the future.

It's hard enough for most restaurants to create and present a single menu that makes sense to the diner, let alone two.

A reasonably new theme in the western world, Indian culture has known how to heal the body through food for thousands of years.

I have a huge workload. I don't know how to say no sometimes.

I have not yet had the great fortune of visiting India, but I really hope to one day. I am in love with the vibrance, diversity and energy of India.

My family taught me to be adventurous. As fearless eaters, mum and dad were never afraid of exposing us to strange textures, scents, and offally bits - the works.

As a food writer, it's my job to know each and every cuisine on this planet as well as I can.

I have an affinity with Mediterranean cuisine. Spending a few summers in Italy, France, Spain and Turkey, there's something brilliant about freshly caught fish, slashed, scattered with a few herbs, a squeeze of lemon, a slug of good olive oil, then thrown on a grill.

I believe in being able to reserve things to yourself. That's the way I was brought up.

My journey into the world of work after that was a bit more piecemeal than I would have liked, and it took a while to find the place in the world where I truly felt I belonged.

I've really missed my Reformer Pilates sessions during lockdown because I'm someone who likes to workout with a lot of toys!

I love any of Rick Stein's television productions - the way he speaks about food is with such love and respect.

It's about learning how to slow down... I think this Covid environment that we're in there's a lot of sadness and a lot of pressure going on in terms of the uncertainty, but what it is teaching us or forcing us to do is appreciate the small things: be grateful for a slower pace of life.

If the experiences in my childhood have helped me become strong, then I can articulate those experiences and perhaps tell people out there that have gone through the same thing that they're not alone.

Growing up in a Singaporean Chinese family, for me food is almost the primary means of communication between family members, both immediate and extended... hey, it beats discussing which cousin did better at end of semester exams, or who's getting married next, right?

I am a tiny lady with curves... that's who I am.

I like showing people I can do something they wouldn't have pegged me as being able to do. I've always wanted to defy expectations.