For the most part, French cities are much better preserved and looked after than British cities, because the bourgeoisie, the people who run the cities, have always lived centrally, which has only recently begun to happen in big cities in England. Traditionally in England, people who had any money would live out in the suburbs. Now, increasingly, people with money live in the cities, but this has changed only in the last 20 or so years.

Going on things like rollercoasters is not really up my street I guess. I don't feel like I need to do stunts. I'm too scared and I don't think it's my job.

In creating a building, architects do think they're making the world a better place. And then they hope to make the world an even better place by making another thing which will be even bigger than the last thing... and it is part of the pathology of being an architect to believe thus, and they do believe it, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

The only bright feature of cultural relativism's triumph is that it has become establishment orthodoxy and will thus one day be derided, resisted and overthrown.

I don't like the theatre. I like plays in which the audience is addressed by the actors. I don't like seeing people talking to each other on stage as if there isn't an audience.

I've been offered radio but never done it, partly because the radio ideas that I've been asked to come up with, I've thought about them and then converted them to telly things.

I wasn't a keen taker of speed because I didn't like the comedown from it.