I like looking at the countryside as well as anyone... a little countryside goes a long way, but it's almost like the DNA of a civilisation is in its cities.

I like extremely effeminate dogs like terriers or schnauzers. I make an exception for giant schnauzers and big poodles. Basically, I like dogs which can be dyed day-glo colours.

You always have to find something to say about the subject and in seven cases out of ten there is nothing to say.

I'm not against architecture per se, I'm just against bad architecture.

I think television is a medium which has the potential to do great things but has been traduced by these... terrible people who rise through the ranks.

I genuinely find it difficult to think of places that I'd never want to see again. It might be because part of my career has been concerned with writing about topography.

The only bright feature of cultural relativism's triumph is that it has become establishment orthodoxy and will thus one day be derided, resisted and overthrown.

I do make myself be interested in places in a way that I don't make myself be interested in people.

When I started writing fiction it always seemed in retrospect (I didn't realise at the time) that it was always caused by environments rather than by incidents and characters.

If you have slightly pathological interest in all the components of places, it forces you to engage with them in a way that perhaps otherwise you wouldn't, and that's the only way I can put it.

Vertigo doesn't apply in planes for some reason. You think it's some kind of magic and you don't know how it's keeping you up, but when you're on a cliff top it's a different matter.

Tell me you won't go, tell me you'll stay forever, tell me you love me.

Self motivation leads to acceptance of thyself.

Of all the plagues a lover bears, Sure rivals are the worstI can endure my own despair, But not another’s hope.

Calm down, Think different, Find your way ...

Even if you're just making a list of all the things you have to do, putting your pen to paper gets it out of your head. It puts you in this place of release.

Be a dynamo of irrepressible joy!

There is no conceivable situation in which it is not safe to trust God.

When we view elevated ideas of Nature, the result of that view is admiration, which is always the cause of pleasure.

Children really brighten up a household. They never turn the lights off.

The real gift of gratitude is that the more grateful you are, the more present you become.