A panel at a beautiful annual literary festival in Brazil, held in the almost Utopian coastal town of Parati, found me matched with Fernando Gabeira. This comparison reduced my own limited charisma value to something like zero: Gabeira has excelled at every cultural activity in Brazil.

My political life has been informed by the view that if there was any truth to religion there wouldn't really be any need for politics.

Martin is your best friend, isn't he?' a sweet and well-intentioned girl once said when both of us were present: it was the only time I ever felt awkward about this precious idea, which seemed somehow to risk diminishment if it were uttered aloud.

Pakistan has to export a lot of uneducated people, many of whom have become infected with the most barbaric reactionary ideas.

I don't think there's any need to have essays advocating selfishness among human beings; I don't know what your impression has been, but some things require no further reinforcement.

I could be spending time looking through a telescope or into a microscope and finding out the most extraordinary, wonderful things, but people say faith can move mountains. Faith in what, by the way? You haven't said.

Talking, it seemed to me, was the point of adult existence.