My parents were liberal intellectuals but even they expected me to stay at home and look after my younger siblings and do the housework.

I realised I'd never climb Everest but thought I could still write a book

Hard to remember who is more dangerous: the people who are attacking our liberties overseas, or those who are suppressing them at home.

Nothing kinder than strangers. Nothing stranger than kindness.

I look at the great poets of the Soviet Union, like Anna Akhmatova, who endured far worse then anything we've seen or hopefully that we will ever see. If they could keep writing and keep a voice alive, keep people hopeful through their poetry, then I would be ashamed to stop and to give in. It would be really self-indulgent, unacceptable, and inexcusable to walk away from it.

I'm at the atheist end of the agnostic spectrum.

Heart surgeons do not have the world's smallest egos: when you ask them to name the world's three leading practitioners, they never can remember the names of the other two.