It is far easier to explain to a three-year-old how babies are made than to explain the processes whereby bread or sugar appear on the table.

Undoubtedly the Afghans must be, by our standards, the best-looking people in the world. They have everything; height, proportions, carriage, features and complexion.

poverty denotes a lack of necessities and simplicity a lack of needs.

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

Sunnis consider Shias a pack of unwholesome fanatics and Shias consider Sunnis a gang of lukewarm no-goods - there's nothing like religion for spreading brotherly love!

Each human spirit is immortalfor time cannot destroy

To me writing was not a career but a necessity. And so it remains, though I am now, technically, a professional writer. The strength of this inborn desire to write has always baffled me. It is understandable that the really gifted should feel an overwhelming urge to use their gift; but a strong urge with only a slight gift seems almost a genetic mistake.