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I have realized after all these years that a city that has a good quality of life attracts jobs. People don't want to invest in places if there is no quality of life.

The trouble with those people is that they think all the best things are made in the cities. It is not so.

Cities produce love and yet feel none. A strange thing when you think about it, but perhaps fitting. Cities need that love more than most of us care to imagine. Cities, after all, for all their massiveness, all their there-ness, are acutely vulnerable.

Cities depend on a healthy mix of uses and people for their vitality. As a pre-eminent world city, London is a magnet to people from across the globe.

When you look at a city, you know, it looks so unique. You feel this kind of uniqueness, you know, and especially if you go from a big city to a small city or if you go from one country to another. Cities look very different, often. They even feel very different. You know, and they are, of course. They certainly are.

Country people give me more than writers, and country places than towns.

Where a city is only focused on one aspect, it becomes a city without a soul, not a city people want to live in.

Cities are not static objects to be feared or admired, but are instead a living process that residents are changing all the time.

I just think cities are unnatural, basically. I know there are people who live happily in them, and I have cities that I love, too. But it's a disaster that we have moved so far from nature.