I am often thanked by people for inventing the term traditionally built. The people who give me thanks for this are often traditionally built themselves.

At night we are all strangers, even to ourselves.

International business, once allowed to stalk uncontrolled, killed the local, the small, the quirky.

Reality television, which turned its eye on people who were doing nothing but being themselves, was the perfect expression of this trend [of narcissism]. Let's look at ourselves, it said. Aren't we fascinating?

To lose a child ... was something that could end one's world. One could never get back to how it was before. The stars went out. The moon disappeared. The birds became silent.

Painters aren't expected to paint bleak pictures, are they?

It seems to me that we're in danger of losing sight of certain basic civic values in society by allowing the growth of a whole generation of people who really have no sense of attachment to society.