Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events.

The zoo cannot but disappoint. The public purpose of zoos is to offer visitors the opportunity of looking at animals. Yet nowherein a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal's gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond.

To be naked is to be oneself.

We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.

To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself.

In the modern world, in which thousands of people are dying every hour as a consequence of politics, no writing anywhere can begin to be credible unless it is informed by political awareness and principles. Writers who have neither product utopian trash.

I wanted to write about looking at the world, so it's more about helping people, or persuading people, to see what is around us; both the marvellous and the terrible.