My wife is very interested in fashion. I am absolutely not. I couldn’t give a toss. Fashion is a perfectly valid thing to be interested in. I’m just not particularly interested in pop culture. I think I am more interested in things that have a settled permanence about them. Simon Winchester Read Quote
I don’t hero worship for the sake of hero worship. When I find people who are truly remarkable – and I think Joseph Needham is a classic example – I do value their counsel. Simon Winchester Read Quote
To be perfectly honest the old habits, specifically deadlines, still very much inform what I do. I am brutally disciplined about getting manuscripts in on time. Simon Winchester Read Quote
I do as much bookish research as I can but when I sit down to write, often I think, ‘Wait, I was there.’ That is one of the great advantages of having wandered around the world and lived in so many places and met such fascinating people. Simon Winchester Read Quote
Why do we as a people choose to live in beautiful and risky places? Beautiful places are relatively dangerous; the forces that made them beautiful are the same forces that will ultimately destroy them. Simon Winchester Read Quote
Nothing is eternally stable, and even Kansas isn’t really in Kansas anymore. The earth is in a constant state of flux. Simon Winchester Read Quote
We kid ourselves that we’re trying to be empathetic with the human condition from a distance, but I don’t think that is it at all. It’s stupid; it’s a waste of time. But when the earth flexes its muscles, that’s rather different. That’s a powerful reminder of where we are. Simon Winchester Read Quote
I find the science behind major natural events almost more interesting than the way in which those same events wreak their effects on human society. Simon Winchester Read Quote
The nature of catastrophe is, after all, reasonably unvarying in the way it ruins, destroys, wounds and devastates. But if something can be learned from the event – not least something as profound as the theory of plate tectonics – then it somehow puts the ruination into a much more positive light. Simon Winchester Read Quote
