One of the problems of truth being censored for a really long time is that people lose the ability to intuit what truth might be, and therefore begin to swallow whatever they're fed. I think that's something that the Chinese have learned very well. They've even managed to persuade quite large segments of the population that the martyrs of Tiananmen were actually an anti-national element. People don't view them as heroes, they see them as troublemakers. There you have a combination of censorship of truth creating a new truth, which is the lie, but it's not seen as such.

All my adult life, if I didn't have several hours a day to sit in a room by myself, I would get antsy and irritable.

The whole story of migration and what that has done in interconnecting the planet is obviously something I've written about a lot.

Terror is glamour - not only, but also. I am firmly convinced that there's something like a fascination with death among suicide bombers.

Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.

Reading is a very different thing than performing. In fact, one of the things I think that doesn't work in books on tape is if the person doing the reading "acts" too much; it becomes irritating to you listening to it.

It is often said by religious people that without its framework, there is no sense of right or wrong. My view is that religion comes after ethics.