America is a great disappointment to me. As I said in one of my books, other societies create civilisations; we build shopping malls.

Roads get wider and busier and less friendly to pedestrians. And all of the development based around cars, like big sprawling shopping malls. Everything seems to be designed for the benefit of the automobile and not the benefit of the human being.

I often feel I'm a disappointment to people because they expect me to be the guy in the books. When I sit next to someone at a dinner party I can see they expect me to be quick and witty, and I'm not at all.

Des Moines is like your typical American city; it's just these concentric circles of malls, built outward from the city.

I've been going to shopping malls since I was on General Hospital.

Where I grew up, in Des Moines, Iowa, there is hardly any downtown economic activity now. Everybody shops in malls - you don't find a sense of community in malls.