Americans have got it so dinged into them that they are the most fortunate people on Earth, and that the rest of the world - the sooner it copies what America is like, the better.

(The psuedoscience of planning seems almost neurotic in its determination to imitate empiric failure and ignore empiric success.)

I am not any hate-America person. I really came here for positive reasons.

The Japanese are virtuosos. They make just the little accent that makes all the difference. So much there is so beautiful - just a shop window display is a work of art. Just the way they make all kinds of things out of bamboo that are so ingenious. Just the way this little bamboo drain or latch is so beautiful. The masonry around the streams to hold the bank are beautiful - and not all one kind and not just cement.

observation of realities has never, to put it mildly, been one of the strengths of economic development theory.

[ René Lévesque] didn't understand why things do collapse. It's usually a very banal reason why things do collapse. It's not a grand reason, why they collapse economically, at least in the West.

I am ambivalent about London because I am so ambivalent about England in general.