“It is unthinkable to have a British countryside that doesn't have actual functioning farmers riding tractors, cows in fields, things like that.”
“England was full of words I'd never heard before - streaky bacon, short back and sides, Belisha beacon, serviettes, high tea, ice-cream cornet.”
“I understand cricket - what's going on, the scoring - but I can't understand why.”
“America is a great disappointment to me. As I said in one of my books, other societies create civilisations; we build shopping malls.”
“I still enjoy traveling a lot. I mean, it amazes me that I still get excited in hotel rooms just to see what kind of shampoo they've left me.”
“Roads get wider and busier and less friendly to pedestrians. And all of the development based around cars, like big sprawling shopping malls. Everything seems to be designed for the benefit of the automobile and not the benefit of the human being.”
“I want things to be better all the time. And I tend to get angry about that. Books are an opportunity to vent.”
“Book tours are really kind of fun. You get to stay in nice hotels, you are driven everywhere in big silver cars, you are treated as if you are much more important than you are, you can eat steak three times a day at someone else's expense, and you get to talk endlessly about yourself for weeks at a stretch.”
“Britain still has the most reliably beautiful countryside of anywhere in the world. I would hate to be part of the generation that allowed that to be lost.”
“Open your refrigerator door, and you summon forth more light than the total amount enjoyed by most households in the 18th century. The world at night, for much of history, was a very dark place indeed.”