After a lifetime of war-watching, I see war as an endemic human disease, and governments are the carriers.

You have to stop living in order to write.

the English don't go in for imagination: imagination is considered to be improper if not downright alarmist.

All amateur travellers have experienced horror journeys, long or short, sooner or later, one way or another. As a student of disaster, I note that we react alike to our tribulations: frayed and bitter at the time, proud afterwards. Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival.

A broken heart is such a shabby thing, like poverty and failure and the incurable diseases which are also deforming. I hate it and am ashamed of it, and I must somehow repair this heart and put it back into its normal condition, as a tough somewhat scarred but operating organ.

I know enough to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother.

Officialdom is hostile to inquiring outsiders.