In Shanghai, I saw great contrasts. On one street there would be impressive shops selling copies of the latest word in glamorous European fashion, and around the corner on a back street there were poor families crammed into one room with a naked light bulb. One evening I heard a Chinese family singing "Happy Birthday." It was weird. You would have thought that they'd have their own happy birthday song. Every dominant society in the world - whether it's French or British or American - imposes its culture on less developed societies.

I didn't go to school much, so I taught myself what I knew from reading.

Man who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!

I'm not one of those writers that sits worrying about posthumous fame.

We've got to believe in our beautiful impossible blueprints.

Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.

When young I did my best to undo that bit of the British Empire I found myself in: that is, old Southern Rhodesia.