I mistrust total competence. I've always felt life is a series of small disasters we try to get through.

Contrary to what the politicians and religious leaders would like us to believe, the world won't be made safer by creating barriers between people.

I am certainly more interested in interviewing than being interviewed. Sometimes you find yourself attacked from the start.

I saw novelists as being admirable people and I thought... I thought... maybe, one day, I could be one of them.

[There] are people who make a complete and utter mockery of 'democracy' and 'equality' - they're the casualties of the primitive rules of competition which run our society, and the welfare state just keeps them alive. That's all.

There is barely a country in the world where you will be completely safe.

I wanted to be an explorer, but gradually found the world had been explored and that there was nowhere left, really. Once they climbed Everest in 1953, when I was 10 years old, I thought, 'Well, that's pretty much it now.' But the idea of travelling and exploring and adventure was very strong.