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

It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.

What I really can't stand about the feminist revolution is that it produced some of the smuggest, most unselfcritical people the world has ever seen. They are horrible.

Africa gives you the knowledge that man is a small creature, among other creatures, in a large landscape.

One certainty we all accept is the condition of being uncertain and insecure.

This world is run by people who know how to do things. They know how things work. They are equipped. Up there, there's a layer of people who run everything. But we - we're just peasants. We don't understand what's going on, and we can't do anything.

It can be considered a rule that the probable duration of an Empire may be prognosticated by the degree to which its rulers believe in their own propaganda.