Well, I had a small degree, that little infection of skepticism about America which resides in the minds of even America's closest friends. That America can't be quite as good as it says it is. And why does it need so relentlessly to keep saying how good it is?

I am not really retired, and may never be completely, but I can't think of a better place to contemplate retirement than New York City.

I think one of the lessons we learn in life - and it's an old lesson, but each of us has to learn it, if he does, individually - and that is that, in human relations, particularly sexual relations and so on, the person you might most trust and feel most comfortable and easy with isn't necessarily the person your heart is going to fall for.

Parents can plant magic in a child's mind through certain words spoken with some thrilling quality of voice, some uplift of the heart and spirit.

I never wanted to be a pundit.

I grew up in kind of the last generation of Canadians who thought things that were happening in Britain were more important, almost, than what was happening in Canada. And my mother was fervently of that opinion.

We spent a month in Japan last year, a week in Istanbul for the United Nations, and nearly three months in my native Nova Scotia, where my two brothers have homes; and we'll go back there this summer.