Our instinct may be to see the impossibility of tracking everything down as frustrating, dispiriting, perhaps even appalling, but it can just as well be viewed as almost unbearably exciting. We live on a planet that has a more or less infinite capacity to surprise. What reasoning person could possibly want it any other way?

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.

Des Moines is like your typical American city; it's just these concentric circles of malls, built outward from the city.

I love the feeling of being anonymous in a city I've never been before.

I can't fix the world. If you want to make a difference in life, you have to direct your energies in a focused way.

England was full of words I'd never heard before - streaky bacon, short back and sides, Belisha beacon, serviettes, high tea, ice-cream cornet.

18th century scientists, the French in particular, seldom did things simply if an absurdly demanding alternative was available.