If you drive to, say, Shenandoah National Park, or the Great Smoky Mountains, you'll get some appreciation for the scale and beauty of the outdoors. When you walk into it, then you see it in a completely different way. You discover it in a much slower, more majestic sort of way.

Geologists are never at a loss for paperweights.

There is something about the momentum of travel that makes you want to just keep moving, to never stop.

I'm definitely an American, because I grew up here. But I've lived very happily in Britain.

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

You can always tell a Midwestern couple in Europe because they will be standing on a traffic island in the middle of a busy intersection looking at a windblown map and arguing over which way is west. European cities, with their wandering streets and undisciplined alleys, drive Midwesterners practically insane.

To my mind, the only possible pet is a cow. Cows love you. They will listen to your problems and never ask a thing in return. They will be your friends forever. And when you get tired of them, you can kill and eat them. Perfect.