I realize how much [Mark] Twain fabricated things. I like it very much, but it's only half true. And it shows what he was trying to do, which was just entertain. Which he does very successfully, though the humor is almost dated now.

I tend to prefer traveling in the Third World countries. Like Ethiopia. Or Eritrea.

I was talking to my publisher in Britain and was told here we are - we are sixty million people and we reckon only four hundred thousand people in Britain really read.

People my age and younger do think much more towards Europe. We have to fill the gap sometime - we can't think we are an empire any longer after all.

I am no apologist for Fidel's [Castro] regime. It is, after all, a totalitarian regime. So I would like to see that change.

I am always surprised when people do get upset. Perhaps its just the nutty people who write to newspapers who get upset.

This terrible frustration that we so often feel in the West in not being able to articulate and express ourselves.