I suppose I could say that to be interested in innocence already suggests a remove from innocence, perhaps a longing for something that is lost.

If there is innocence on Earth again, I tend to imagine it in more [Henry David]Thoreau sort of terms.

I feel almost as if I had been born in a vacuum of innocence, and then had to come to terms with the fact that actually, I was born into the middle of history - the rather grimy normality of the 70s, which did, indeed, retain some traces of human innocence, but were also girded about by the demons of experience.

[My muse] is, in fact, a woman of the world, and precisely because of this, hopes that a diversity of cultures will endure, and that one bland monoculture does not swamp everything.

I grew up in North Devon, by the sea, and feel a special affinity for the landscape there, despite a lack of actual ancestry.

The peculiar thing is that, in focusing only on the here and now, Buddhism seems to despise the world.

In the meditation, of course, the question is repeated and repeated until you run out of answers - or so I hear.