When the poet Paul Valery once asked Albert Einstein if he kept a notebook to record his ideas, Einstein looked at him with mild but genuine surprise. "Oh, that's not necessary," he replied . "It's so seldom I have one.

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.

Clearly, some time ago makers and consumers of American junk food passed jointly through some kind of sensibility barrier in the endless quest for new taste sensations. Now they are a little like those desperate junkies who have tried every known drug and are finally reduced to mainlining toilet bowl cleanser in an effort to get still higher.

In terms of adaptability, humans are pretty amazingly useless.

It is a curious feature of our existance that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguishing it.

Everything seems to be designed for the benefit of the automobile and not the benefit of the human being.

As the saying goes, it takes all kinds to make the world go around, though perhaps some shouldn't go quite so far around it as others.