I Don't Want To Go And Start

America Is A Great Disappointment To Me. As I Said In One Of My Books, Other Societies Create Civilisations; We Build Shopping Malls.

But That's The Glory Of Foreign Travel, As Far As I Am Concerned. I Don't Want To Know What People Are Talking About. I Can't Think Of Anything That Excites A Greater Sense Of Childlike Wonder Than To Be In A Country Where You Are Ignorant Of Almost Everything. Suddenly You Are Five Years Old Again. You Can't Read Anything, You Have Only The Most Rudimentary Sense Of How Things Work, You Can't Even Reliably Cross A Street Without Endangering Your Life. Your Whole Existence Becomes A Series Of Interesting Guesses.

It Is A Slightly Arresting Notion That If You Were To Pick Yourself Apart With Tweezers, One Atom At A Time, You Would Produce A Mound Of Fine Atomic Dust, None Of Which Had Ever Been Alive But All Of Which Had Once Been You.

If You Drive To, Say, Shenandoah National Park, Or The Great Smoky Mountains, You'll Get Some Appreciation For The Scale And Beauty Of The Outdoors. When You Walk Into It, Then You See It In A Completely Different Way. You Discover It In A Much Slower, More Majestic Sort Of Way.

When The Duke [w.j.c. Scott-bentinck] Died, His Heirs Found All Of The Aboveground Rooms Devoid Of Furnishings Except For One Chamber In The Middle Of Which Sat The Duke's Commode. The Main Hall Was Mysteriously Floor Less. Most Of The Rooms Were Painted Pink. The One Upstairs Room In Which The Duke Had Resided Was Packed To The Ceiling With Hundreds Of Green Boxes, Each Of Which Contained A Single Dark Brown Wig. This Was, In Short, A Man Worth Getting To Know.