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

With our mad lust for Uniformity and a Higher Standard of Living and Expanding Markets, we go to a country like Afghanistan and cruelly try to jerk her forward two thousand years in two decades, giving no thought to the profound shock this must be to her national psychology.

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.

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.

Without evading the grimness of life in much of modern Africa, one can recognize that this continent is not yet sick as our continent is sick. Most Africans remain plugged into reality. In contrast we have become disconnected from it, reduced to compulsively consuming units, taught to worship 'economic growth' - the ultimate unreality in a finite world.

Buying a bicycle is a momentous event, akin to marriage: you are acquiring a partner.