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

There are no young people who know how to debate, who know how to vote, and who know how to persuade people to vote. And you have seen this in Paraguay and they are reaping the harvest now of fifty years of dictatorship.

The noise that we can expect in the future will only increase and we'll be wishing for rural Portugal or something like that.

It is a gift, and you realize as soon as you cross the border into Paraguay, as I did, the first time in '82, that you are in a sort of wonderland. Nothing is quite right: the buildings, they've got their own architecture, their own language; and everything is just a little bit off key.

I would love to write a book that opens people's eyes to the more interesting side.

I'd like to write fiction. Perhaps at some stage.

If you travel in countries like Morocco, and I say that because I have just come from Morocco, if people are shouting at each other in an argument, violence is not going to follow. That would be just so far removed.