The worst thing about being a great power is when you're not one any more. It takes centuries to get over it.

My advice to anyone adapting a novel is that once they've read it and learnt to understand it, then they must throw it away and never look at it again!

I think trying to be cool is the worst possible ambition - and I have never suffered from it.

The earth only has so much bounty to offer and inventing ever larger and more notional prices for that bounty does not change its real value.

My parents were secular. I am an atheist.

Artists don't create society, they reflect it

I resent the creation of a world in which beauty is a reminder of what we're losing rather than a celebration of what we have.