one feels guilty on behalf of Western civilisation. What damage are we doing, blindly and swiftly, to those races who are being taught that because we are materially richer we must be emulated without question? What compels us to infect everyone else with our own sick urgency to change, soften and standardise? How can we have the effrontery to lord it over peoples who retain what we have lost - a sane awareness that what matters most is immeasurable?

... I know a number of Western children who would benefit greatly if only someone were primitive enough to inhibit the development of their personalities.

one of the advantages of cycling is that it automatically prevents a journey from becoming an Expedition.

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.

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!

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.

Is this something else our age does - on the one hand make communication easier than ever before, while on the other hand widening the gulf between those who are 'developed' and those who are not?