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.

That's more about lifestyle [Peter Mayles], living abroad. It's about buying a donkey and house in south France, and that's a slightly different thing. A very popular genre but that's not quite my thing.

In Western Civilization - America and Britain - if you see people talking and it becomes an argument and voices are raised, you are not surprised if violence follows. Hopefully it won't, but you are not surprised.

I think one should express opinions and these books are relatively opinionated. They would be a bit dry without it.

I am certainly very pro-Europe.

The United Nations was the thing I wanted to work for. Like the United Nations Commission for Refugees is what I was interested in. And then people said if you do that you'll hit glass ceilings all the time, because you are not Ghanian or Nigerian and that's the way to progress though a multinational organization like that. In any event, they said do five years' legal experience and come back. And after five years I decided to stay where I was. So I am really an accidental lawyer.

Paraguayans have no Italian blood and are half Guarani [Indian] blood. And the Chileans call themselves "the English of South America," which actually couldn't be further from the truth.