I'm useless when I meet writers I love - I go slack-jawed and stupid with awe.

In any country, corruption tends to increase when more respectable means of social advancement break down.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Never trust anyone who tells you how people come to trust them.

.. becoming attached to a country involves pressing, uncomfortable questions about justice and opportunity for its least powerful citizens.

But if writing about people who are not yourself is illegitimate, then the only legitimate work is autobiography; and as a reader and a citizen, I don’t want to live in that world.

What you don't want is always going to be with you What you want is never going to be with you Where you don't want to go, you have to go And the moment you think you're going to live more, you're going to die

I think it's this congenital problem with journalism that we oversell the difference we make. We make small differences.