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.

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 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.

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.

Some girls are full of heartache and poetry and those are the kind of girls who try to save wolves instead of running away from them.

No young woman of good breeding should show exclusive partiality to one partner all night.

My mother, father, stepmother and surrogate mother have all died of cancer; my best friend has got terminal cancer and at least five of my other friends have had cancer but survived it.

I feel like my job is to give hope. The world is in a dark place and we are living in somewhat of a nightmare. So I want to make films to give hope.

He will risk half his fortune in the stock market with less reflection that he devotes to the selection of a medium-priced automobile.

The Fear of Death often proves Mortal.

Tragedy is something that happens to a lot of people - it's a tragedy if you react with handwringing.

With Taiwan, it took about 40 years to go from an authoritarian to a democratic society.

There isn't any delusion. It is absolutely clear that this body energy is a genuine phenomenon of some kind.

If penicillin had been judged by its toxicity to guinea pigs, it might never have been used by man.