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.

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

I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted, or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored.

It was one of those sumptuous days when the world is full of autumn muskiness and tangy, crisp perfection: vivid blue sky, deep green fields, leaves in a thousand luminous hues. It is a truly astounding sight when every tree in a landscape becomes individual, when each winding back highway and plump hillside is suddenly and infinitely splashed with every sharp shade that nature can bestow - flaming scarlet, lustrous gold, throbbing vermilion, fiery orange.

A cough so robust that I tapped into two new seams of phlegm.

I could spend my life arriving each evening in a new city.

Houses aren't refuges from history. They are where history ends up.