“Remember preconceptions? Even though I'd landed hoping simply to somehow scrape the transatlantic fare home, I'd been an arrogant swine, imbued with that Old World toffee-nosed attitude: The United States of America's got no culture, not deep down.”

“America's phones are bliss. Their habit of actually working is very disconcerting: Put in a coin, and speak to whoever answers. I truly hope it catches on everywhere.”

“The problem: If you've an antique for sale, then, sad to relate, the world isn't your oyster. It's not that easy. Even if somebody gives you the National Gallery, your options are still very, very limited. Okay, you can sell the Old Masters, set up a trust, buy your favorite brewery. But that's strictly it. You're limited by honesty on one hand and law - that hobble of sanity - on the other.”

“The exhibition gobsmacked me. I'm not ashamed to admit it. Here was quite a small building, not many people about, getting little attention. And inside they'd pulled together a staggering display of Regency furniture. I've seen most of the stuff that matters. I simply stood there, gaping.”

“Every inch of space was used. As the road narrowed, signs receded upwards and changed to the vertical. Businesses simply soared from ground level and hung out vaster, more fascinatingly illuminated shingles than competitors. We were still in a traffic tangle, but now the road curved. Shops crowded the pavements and became homelier. Vegetables, spices, grocery produce in boxes or hanging from shop lintels, meats adangle - as always, my ultimate ghastliness - and here and there among the crowds the alarming spectacle of an armed Sikh, shotgun aslant, casually sitting at a bank entrance. And markets everywhere. To the right, cramped streets sloped down to the harbor. To the left, as we meandered along the tramlines through sudden dense markets of hawkers' barrows, the streets turned abruptly into flights of steps careering upwards into a bluish mist of domestic smoke, clouds of washing on poles, and climbing. Hong Kong had the knack of building where others wouldn't dare.”

“The Metropolitan Museum of Art claims to be the largest in the western hemisphere. It's right, but I'm not too sure about the arts bit. Don't misunderstand me. It's got tons of genuine art. It's also got tons of stuff that is hard to classify. I can't come to grips with a massive cube with a grandiose title. I allow that it's art, but not my sort. I need the big stone block to tell me something about the bloke whose name's on the caption, and it doesn't. That off my chest, I admit that any place with 3.3 million works of art truly is a wonder.”

“Even gods decay. Like, in 1890 somebody sold off thousands of mummified Ancient Egyptian sacred cats - _for fertilizer_. Get the point? Constancy isn't.”