Quotes from Jeremy Clarkson

I came up with the best pastime in the history of man. What you do is find an aerosol tin of spray adhesive, such as you would use to stick posters to a wall. You then lie in wait and when a wasp flies by, you leap out and give it a squirt. Bingo. One minute it's flying; the next it's tumbling silently out of the sky with a confused look on its stupid little face.

I've said it before and I'm going to say it here again, now. Nothing brilliant has ever resulted from a meeting.

In Italy, you sometimes get the impression they'd be happier to lose the Ppe than lose their right to drive like maniacs.

would like to see a fund set up that does nothing but pay for great public buildings, follies, laser shows, towers, fountains, airships, aqueducts. Big, expensive stuff designed solely to make us go 'wow'. I even have a name for this fund. We could call it the lottery.

on iPhone) the battery is fine. It lasts for four days. Though this might have something to do with the fact that I'm a man, and therefore only think to use a phone when I'm on a cliff, clinging to a branch, in a howling gale. And only then as a last resort.

The rules of war, then, have always changed as a reaction to the conflict that's just been fought.

At this time of year many people decide that they should go on a Christmas-shopping trip to New York.

But here too there's a problem – the faster you go, the more time slows down. This is a scientific fact. I spend my life driving quickly, which is why I have a 1970s haircut.

A saloon car has to be fast and comfortable and refined, and all of this stuff costs millions of pounds to develop. An SUV just needs to be big and full of buttons. That costs 8p.

IF THE MCLAREN P1 ISN'T FASTER THAN THOSE OTHER TWO CARS YOU CAN KNOCK MY HOUSE DOWN … OH BUGGER' – JEREMY CLARKSON

Many think the steering wheel is nothing more than a handy place to rest a laptop. Going round a corner at more than 2mph would cause your bucket of coffee to fall over. So why bother?

Mercs used to be styled by a man called Brown Bag. I'm not joking. That was his name. Oh, he said it in Italian to make it sound more interesting, but there's no getting round the fact that Bruno Sacco means Brown Bag.

There are many ways to tell if someone is a bit thick. You can sit them in a room and ask them to push various bits of plastic into a wooden box. Or you can ask them to describe a cloud. Or you can carefully measure the distance between their eyes, the height of their forehead or the length of their arm.

When I was in the middle of Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy – which was not selected for the Man Booker shortlist – you could have taken my liver out and fed it to the dog. And I wouldn't have noticed. Which

Let's not forget what happened when Morgan Piers went to America and lectured them on gun ownership. They put a flea in his ear and sent him packing, and now he has to earn a living from behind a veil of orange makeup on breakfast TV. If Ms Meghan doesn't learn a lesson from that sorry tale, she may well end up in exactly the same boat.

The problem is that social media, which is seen as the pulse of the nation, is actually nothing of the sort. It's the pulse of the young and the idealistic.

reaching for the 'Yes

Back in August 1960 an American pilot called Joe Kittinger climbed into the open gondola beneath a balloon called Excelsior III and floated up to 102,800 feet. At this point, 20 miles above the Earth in what is technically space, he jumped. Moments later he became the first man to go through the sound barrier without the benefit of a plane. It was, and still is, the highest parachute jump ever, and it proved you can 'abandon ship' even when you're in space.

On top of the dashboard are three dials in a raised binnacle. They tell you nothing you need to know but they look good. They look sporty. They tell you that you are a man in a hurry, but here's hoping you aren't, because this is not a fast car.

The Italians are responsible for Fiat, Ferrari, Lancia, Alfa Romeo, De Tomaso, Lamborghini, Maserati and Pagani. It wouldn't seem so unfair if they weren't also really good at food, art and fashion. Selfish. That's what it is, it's selfish.

If I may be permitted to liken America to the human body, then I think it is fair to say that California is its face, New York is its brain and Texas is its heart. If you wanna know what makes America tick, get your ten-gallon hat on, and get yourself to Texas.

There are many models in the current range, and if you ask a 911 enthusiast to talk you through the subtle differences between each, you can be sure that by the end of the conversation one of you will be dead.

As I've said before, I never understand why people ski down a slope to a bar and then go on a lift so they can ski down the same slope again. That's like walking to the pub on a Sunday, then going home and walking to the pub again. Madness.

We waste an enormous amount of time making decisions based entirely on this fanciful notion that we like alternatives.