The working class of England take their deracination completely for granted. Disenchantment is the happy code that informs every byway of the underclass: service jobs, celebrity dreams, Lotto wins, leisured poverty on pre-crunch credit cards, it's all there, part of the story of an English people whose grandparents never had it so good.

It's not a crime not to know yourself. It's not a crime to send life away. It's just a shame.

As a writer I care about America, and care about its carelessness.

Traveling alone offers the chance to test the limits of what you think you know about yourself.

Art you can flush down the loo means nothing to me, even were the loo to be selected by Marcel Duchamp

A living museum must surely see itself as a locus of argument. A breathing art institution is not a lockup but a moveable feast.

Given that most movies are bad, and that there are whole categories and sub-categories of badness - the sequel, the Madonna Movie, the Friday 13th Series, or Movies Starring John Travolta Before Pulp Fiction - it is almost impossible to choose a single film for worst movie of all time. But strangely, I do have a nomination and I believe it is actually the worst movie ever made. It is Boxing Helena. The director is David Lynch's daughter, and the film comes with the almost insane-making faults that the family connection might imply.