I wouldn't mind someone lobbing hand grenades at me, but having to reset the timer on the video recorder puts me into a blood-spitting frenzy.

Taste is more to do with manners than appearances. Taste is both myth and reality; it is not a style.

I have put [the word] "discoveries" in inverted commas because scientific results, perhaps as much at least as artistic achievements, are a product of contemporary taste, driven by momentary appetites rather than eternal verities.

That's one of the things about getting older isn't it? You suddenly realise that you are what you set out to be. And there are no role models any more.

Watteau is no less an artist for having painted a fascia board while Sainsbury's is no less effective a business for producing advertisements which entertain and educate instead of condescending and exploiting.

Fashion is the most intense expression of the phenomenon of neomania, which has grown ever since the birth of capitalism. Neomania assumes that purchasing the new is the same as acquiring value... If the purchase of a new garment coincides with the wearing out of an old one, then obviously there is no fashion. If a garment is worn beyond the moment of its natural replacement, there is pauperization. Fashion flourishes on surplus, when someone buys more than he or she needs.

The assumption must be that those who can see value only in tradition, or versions of it, deny man's ability to adapt to changing circumstances.