San Francisco is perhaps the most European of all American cities

[He stared into the camera] like some sort of an animal gazing from across the back of its sty. (On Winston Churchill)

Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.

A technical failure that shows some attempt at aesthetic expression is of infinitely more value than uninspired success.

After twenty annual visits, I am still surprised each time I return to see this giant asparagus bed of alabaster and rose and green skyscrapers.

I can't afford a whole new set of enemies.

On close inspection, this device turned out to be a funereal juke box - the result of mixing Lloyd's of London with the principle of the chewing gum dispenser.