I could believe only in the hell I was living in, a hell on earth, and it was man-made, not God-made.

When I write I try as far as possible to forget I'm writing it at all. I tell it down onto the page, as if I'm telling it to one person only, my best friend.

We have bodies coming home and coffins covered in flags, not just in the UK but world-wide.

If I learned anything in this life, I've learned that you can't cling on.

You know, I really wish now I'd had the nerve to become an actor. Because I'd have been Robert Redford, no question.

Elephants are my favourite creatures and have been since I was a boy and my mother read Kipling's The Elephant's Child to me. It was loving elephants so much that made we want to write my own story with an elephant at the centre and its bond with a child.

There's a nobility in his eye, a regal serenity about him. Does he not personify all that men try to be and never can be?