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While I'm sure people in Britain have money worries, they don't have them like the French do. The French, however much money they have, are worried. They're a very stressed people. It seems to be a very essential component of the national psyche.

Jonathan Meades

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Jonathan Meades
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: January 21
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Television Presenter
Writer
Salisbury
England
Jonathan Turner Meades
Sure
French
Money
Britain
Seems
Worried
Component
Much
Essential
Psyche
Like
Essentials
Worries
People
National
Stressed
However
Worry
Components

More quotes by Jonathan Meades

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As a driver I have come to believe that the person just in front of me and the person just behind me are always just about to do something really stupid. Tense is not the right word, but I am very hyper-aware of such things.
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I wasn't a keen taker of speed because I didn't like the comedown from it.
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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.
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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.
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Conversion requires a subtler mind. Architects don't like it, architects want to create their own landmark buildings so that people a few years hence will say, 'Oh, that building there is being knocked down, who did that one?'
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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.
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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.
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I'm not against architecture per se, I'm just against bad architecture.
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I think in space or music or art or literature of any kind there has to be some kind of void where the viewer or the spectator or the listener or the reader can insert themselves into it, and there is a certain kind of architectural space which is totalitarian, which does not allow you to do that.
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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.
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I don't see any point in having a public service broadcaster which attempts to compete with the commercial sector. Obviously part of its remit is to entertain, but entertainment doesn't necessarily mean scraping the bottom of the barrel and appealing to the very lowest common denominator.
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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'.
Jonathan Meades
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I don't know about virtual world, I think it's more a kind of parallel world. I think the advantages and disadvantages of technology are hugely exaggerated. It doesn't make that much difference. Sure if you've got a mobile phone, you use that over your landline. But I think that life goes on and we absorb stuff.
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I do make myself be interested in places in a way that I don't make myself be interested in people.
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I don't believe in synergy. I believe that things have to be specific to the medium that they're in.
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Brummies run themselves down, they're very self-deprecating. Whereas Yorkshire people certainly aren't.
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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.
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I think the French agonise more about being French, I don't think English think about being English that much. I think the Scottish think about being Scottish and the Welsh think about being Welsh, but the English don't really care. But the French think about it all the time, it's an absolute preoccupation.
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I didn't know what I wanted to do when I was a child. I did want to be a cartographer but that was partly because I liked Ordnance Survey maps and when I used to go to my grandparents' house from Southampton Station one went past the headquarters of the Ordnance Survey.
Jonathan Meades
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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.
Jonathan Meades