If the economy of a country collapses completely and the hospitals are no longer able to function as hospitals, it will be very difficult to tell every doctor to stay home to work without drugs, to work without equipment. You might tell some to stay but there a lot of young people who are at the beginning of their careers who would be very difficult to persuade.

Travellers with closed minds can tell us little except about themselves

What a country needs to do is be fair to all its citizens - whether people are of a different ethnicity or gender.

I did not think of writing as a career and I don't think that I did this ever really, but I think of writing as something that I could do, I should do alongside whatever else I was doing. It simply grew on me.

A toad does not run in the daytime for nothing

A pen on paper is the ideal way for me. I am not really very comfortable with machines; I never learned to type very well.

I prefer to go on trying all kinds of things, not to be told, This is the way it is done.