Out of the thirty thousand types of edible plants thought to exist on Earth, just eleven—corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, cassava, sorghum, millet, beans, barley, rye, and oats—account for 93 percent of all that humans eat, and every one of them was first cultivated by our Neolithic ancestors.

An awful lot of England is slowly eroding, in ways that I find really distressing, and an awful lot of it is the hedgerows... We're reaching the point where a lot of the English countryside looks just like Iowa - just kind of open space.

Life just wants to be; but it doesn't want to be much.

Energy is liberated matter, matter is energy waiting to happen.

The whole of the global economy is based on supplying the cravings of two per cent of the world's population.

Anyone who has read my books will know that I don't tend to use guides when I am travelling. It's not a pride thing, but it is certainly a fact.

I had always thought that once you grew up you could do anything you wanted - stay up all night or eat ice-cream straight out of the container.