We are not held accountable for how the economy ravages Congo. Governments aren't held accountable for foreign policies that they exercise there. There are no institutional structures to render justice. The press is very limited. There's very little transparency. You find a symmetry in certain basic human tendencies, and these tendencies are not always noble or beautiful. I think we have an instinct to turn away from that, to not acknowledge it, while it is something that's a part of us. There's a certain tragic and sad side to human nature that, in our quest for beauty, we ignore.

When people know what you want, they can then manipulate that to achieve the end that they seek. It's far more interesting and valuable to bear witness to a scene and make good relationships without explicitly seeking something. You're more likely to obtain a far richer and honest experience that way.

What I really intend to achieve is to be that fly on the wall, and to try and observe as much as I can without affecting what I've seen. I want to get a sense that what I'm seeing in a place would have happened had I not be there. Were I to make myself an important presence, that would be lost. The danger of a certain other kind of reporting is that people give you what they think you are seeking. People know what you want. When I was traveling in Congo and Rwanda and people asked me what I wanted, I would say, "Nothing. I just want to be here." And that immediately disarmed them.

I certainly think that many of the themes, and many of the ways that I wrote about Congo, will continue to live on in my work. One of the fundamental aspects of my work is for myself and the reader to see the world that they think they know in a different way.

We are not held accountable for how the economy ravages Congo. Governments aren't held accountable for foreign policies that they exercise there. There are no institutional structures to render justice. The press is very limited. There's very little transparency. You find a symmetry in certain basic human tendencies, and these tendencies are not always noble or beautiful. I think we have an instinct to turn away from that, to not acknowledge it, while it is something that's a part of us. There's a certain tragic and sad side to human nature that, in our quest for beauty, we ignore.

My own chief curiosity is to go into the world and explore as richly as I can, and as deeply as I can, and understand its richness as fully as I can, and that certainly will live on.

Living somewhere permanently, you have a stake in society. I had no stake. It did not matter to my life which way the war turned, and I think that gave a certain purity to the endeavor that I undertook. I see it as something positive, something that helps me conduct the kind of reporting that I wanted to do.