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

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 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 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.

Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it.

The word love has been so abused by publicity and advertisements that we no longer know really what it means.

I believe that only one person in a thousand knows the trick of really living in the present.

Meditation is not about stopping thoughts, but recognizing that we are more than our thoughts and our feelings.

Childhood has no necessary connection with age.

I was brought up Roman Catholic. I'm not even baptized.

I'm a very big believer in fate.

By nature I'm not a brooder.

There's a cyclical nature to what people like in the world. Through time, things come around again.

Which form of proverb do you prefer Better late than never, or Better never than late?