When you consider it from a human perspective, and clearly it would be difficult for us to do otherwise, life is an odd thing. It couldn't wait to get going, but then, having gotten going, it seemed in very little hurry to move on.

For a long time, I'd been vaguely fascinated by the idea that Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic and Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in the same summer.

Boston's freeway system is insane. It was clearly designed by a person who had spent his childhood crashing toy trains.

Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness.

Britain still has the most reliably beautiful countryside of anywhere in the world. I would hate to be part of the generation that allowed that to be lost.

America is a great disappointment to me. As I said in one of my books, other societies create civilisations; we build shopping malls.

In my day, the principal concerns of university students were sex, smoking dope, rioting and learning. Learning was something you did only when the first three weren't available.