People can be extraordinarily resilient and show extraordinary grace and humour even in moments of tribulation. I've always found that it's much easier for people who are not terribly, badly off to lose hope and to be pessimistic. I suppose that when you are in a really serious situation, you have to be present, you have to think about it, there's not much scope for self-pity.

Impelled by feelings that were primal yet paradoxically wholly impersonal. Feelings of contempt born of inchoate, unacknowledged fear--civilization's fear of nature, men's fear of women, power's fear of powerlessness. Man's subliminal urge to destroy what he could neither subdue nor deify.

The mullahs of the Islamic world and the mullahs of the Hindu world and the mullahs of the Christian world are all on the same side. And we are against them all.

Non-violence is a piece of theatre. You need an audience. What can you do when you have no audience?

the truth is that it's far easier to make a bomb than to educate four hundred million people.

There's no division on my bookshelf between fiction and nonfiction. As far as I'm concerned, fiction is about the truth.

A sparrow lay dead on the backseat. She had found her way through a hole in the windscreen, tempted by some seat-sponge for her nest. She never found her way out. No one noticed her panicked car-window appeals. She died on the backseat, with her legs in the air. Like a joke.