Radio is very popular [in Britain], but it doesn't connect us in the same way. It seems to have this community function.

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

I want people to laugh with me and Paraguay and Newfoundland, but I don't want to laugh at them. I hope in my books at the end of the day you come across with the impression that I really admire both of these places.

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

When McDonald's opened up in Moscow - I happened to be there when it opened and wandered in. And the Russians were queuing three times around the block to get in. And when they got to the head of the queue, they'd go, "I'll have a Big Mac please. Have you the cheese and the rolls? And do you have the meat and do you have the salad?" And everybody asks this because they are so used to things being awful that it took them a quarter of an hour to order a Big Mac.

If you see our best seller list, most of them are books that are given as gifts. They are books you give to flatter somebody.

Argentina is really in a different category because they butchered all their Indian or indigenous people in the war of the desert in 1850s. Which sets them aside from their neighbors in a macabre way.