“… it occurred to me that never again would he be seven years, one month and six days old, so we had better catch these moments while we can.”

Everything seems to be designed for the benefit of the automobile and not the benefit of the human being.

England was full of words I’d never heard before – streaky bacon, short back and sides, Belisha beacon, serviettes, high tea, ice-cream cornet.

Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you.

It is not as if farming brought a great improvement in living standards either. A typical hunter-gatherer enjoyed a more varied diet and consumed more protein and calories than settled people, and took in five times as much viatmin C as the average person today.

Human beings would split the atom and invent television, nylon, and instant coffee before they could figure out the age of their own planet.

So, if people didn’t settle down to take up farming, why then did they embark on this entirely new way of living? We have no idea – or actually, we have lots of ideas, but we don’t know if any of them are right.

In order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result — eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly — in you.

I know that communism never worked and I would have disliked living under it myself but none the less it seems that there was a kind of sadness in the thought that the only economic system that appeared to work was one based on self interest and greed.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but you would think that if one nation ought by now to have mastered the science of drainage, Britain would be it.

Although a few antibiotics have been toughened up a bit, the pharmaceutical industry hasn’t given us an entirely new antibiotic since the 1970s.

Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old.

Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain – which is to say, all of it.

Enough to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs, assuming you knew how to liberate it and really wished to make a point.

There is something about the momentum of travel that makes you want to just keep moving, to never stop.

To my mind, the only possible pet is a cow. Cows love you. They will listen to your problems and never ask a thing in return. They will be your friends forever. And when you get tired of them, you can kill and eat them. Perfect.

There’d never been a more advantageous time to be a criminal in America than during the 13 years of Prohibition.

You know, either I’m too fat or I’m flavour of the month. I don’t feel either, but maybe I’m both, who knows?

If you’re away from your house for a month, by the time you come back there’s someone else living in it.

When I do a play, it’s like agreeing to be ill for a couple of months.

Research is a lifelong occupation so it’s hard to factor it in, but I reckon most books take 5 months from start to finish.

Always make sure you have your rent. At the end of the month, if you have to eat Ramen for a week because you won’t have your rent money.

I felt like I was homeless anyway, so the change in environment wasn’t that much of a big deal. I felt pretty much the same. After six months of living on the streets [in Camden], I started singing, busking.

I lived in Paris for six months when I was sixteen. It was a fend-for-yourself environment.

The risk that the economy has entered a substantial downturn appears to have diminished over the past month or so.