I wonder if those experts who tell us that our sexual appetite is the strongest know what real thirst feels like; I can imagine the desire for water driving someone to commit a crime to which sexual desire could never drive them.

On my tenth birthday a bicycle and an atlas coincided as presents and a few days later I decided to cycle to India.

Whatever the theologians might say about heaven being in a state of union with God, I knew it consisted of an infinite library; and eternity was simply what enabled one to read uninterruptedly for ever.

There are two phases of enjoyment in journeying through an unknown country - the eager phase of wondering interest in every detail, and the relaxed phase when one feels no longer an observer of the exotic, but a participator in the rhythm of daily life.

The Irish have a flair for wringing from death the last drop of emotion and they do not quite understand those who react otherwise.

the sudden violent dispossession accompanying a refugee flight is much more than the loss of a permanent home and a traditional occupation, or than the parting from close friends and familiar places. It is also the death of the person one has become in a particular context, and every refugee must be his or her own midwife at the painful process of rebirth.

apartheid still hangs in the air like a poisonous cloud left over from chemical warfare.