I can't visualize the situation in which we nuke ourselves into extinction.

I think to be shot in a mountain valley somewhere or other is altogether less glorious than crashing an airliner into a skyscraper.

The great men of power who seek to change the nations they belong to usually are pretty terrible people.

We saw the children and the women with their babies and then I heard the poouff — the flame had broken through the thatched roof and there was a yellow- brown smoke column going up into the air. It didn't hit me all that much then, but when I think of it now — I slaughtered those people. I murdered them.

A civilised man is someone who has discovered something more satisfying than combat.

I don't think that what's going on in Bosnia is political activity. It's partly political, but it's partly atavistic as well.

It's commonly said that people who've been ill in childhood and who've had an upset education never really regret that they do. It means that you don't look at the world in the way that other people do, and if you were inclined to be a writer, that's a help.