Jonathan Meades Quotes

I like extremely effeminate dogs like terriers or schnauzers. I make an exception for giant schnauzers and big poodles. Basically, I like dogs which can be dyed day-glo colours.

You always have to find something to say about the subject and in seven cases out of ten there is nothing to say.

I'm not against architecture per se, I'm just against bad architecture.

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.

I think television is a medium which has the potential to do great things but has been traduced by these... terrible people who rise through the ranks.

I genuinely find it difficult to think of places that I'd never want to see again. It might be because part of my career has been concerned with writing about topography.

The only bright feature of cultural relativism's triumph is that it has become establishment orthodoxy and will thus one day be derided, resisted and overthrown.

I do make myself be interested in places in a way that I don't make myself be interested in people.

When I started writing fiction it always seemed in retrospect (I didn't realise at the time) that it was always caused by environments rather than by incidents and characters.

If you have slightly pathological interest in all the components of places, it forces you to engage with them in a way that perhaps otherwise you wouldn't, and that's the only way I can put it.

I think the only remotely interesting drug was acid. I had a slightly peculiar attitude towards it I think. Just about everything about hippydom I hated.

I'm a very, very unreckless person. I mean, I look left, I look right, I look left, I look right, then I repeat the process and then I decide not to cross the road at the last minute.

I don't believe in synergy. I believe that things have to be specific to the medium that they're in.

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.

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.

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

Going on things like rollercoasters is not really up my street I guess. I don't feel like I need to do stunts. I'm too scared and I don't think it's my job.

When I first started writing in my early 20s it was literary criticism for a very eccentric magazine called Books And Bookmen, which allowed me to write, more or less anything.

I've been offered radio but never done it, partly because the radio ideas that I've been asked to come up with, I've thought about them and then converted them to telly things.

I wasn't a keen taker of speed because I didn't like the comedown from it.

I like irrational things. I like scenarios where I can think, 'It would be great if at this point we could do x.' And there doesn't have to be a reason for 'x'.

Brummies run themselves down, they're very self-deprecating. Whereas Yorkshire people certainly aren't.

The construction industry likes nothing more than a blank canvas onto which they can impose a brand new building, because that way they can make more money.