I don't know about virtual world, I think it's more a kind of parallel world. I think the advantages and disadvantages of technology are hugely exaggerated. It doesn't make that much difference. Sure if you've got a mobile phone, you use that over your landline. But I think that life goes on and we absorb stuff.

If you believe in the existence of fairies at the bottom of the garden you are deemed fit for the bin. If you believe in parthenogenesis, ascension, transubstantiation and all the rest of it you are deemed fit to govern the country.

Vertigo doesn't apply in planes for some reason. You think it's some kind of magic and you don't know how it's keeping you up, but when you're on a cliff top it's a different matter.

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.

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.

One doesn't mind adverse criticism so long as it isn't stupid.

I like looking at the countryside as well as anyone... a little countryside goes a long way, but it's almost like the DNA of a civilisation is in its cities.