The consideration of change over the century is about loss, though I think that social change is gain rather than loss.

The day is refracted, and the next and the one after that, all of them broken up into a hundred juggled segments, each brilliant and self-contained so that the hours are no longer linear but assorted like bright sweets in a jar.

I didn't think I had anything particular to say, but I thought I might have something to say to children.

There's a fearful term that's in fashion at the moment - closure. People apparently believe it is desirable and attainable.

Mythology is much better stuff than history. It has form; logic; a message.

I can walk about London and see a society that seems an absolutely revolutionary change from the 1950s, that seems completely and utterly different, and then I can pick up on something where you suddenly see that it's not.

Born in Jerusalem, Wadie Said went from being a dragoman to a salesman in the United States and thence to a hugely successful businessman in Egypt.