At a certain point, to remain slightly tangential to wherever I was became a way of 'being Tony': by not being anything that everyone else was.

I don't much mind being expelled from communities.

After 1945 what happened was rather the opposite: with one major exception boundaries stayed broadly intact and people were moved instead.

We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth.

The people whose necks hurt when I write about the Middle East tend to live in Brooklyn or Boca Raton: the kind of Zionist who pays another man to live in Israel for him. I have nothing but contempt for such people.

Israel today is bad for the Jews.

I was born accidentally. I lived accidentally in London. We nearly migrated to New Zealand. So much of my life has been a product of chance, I can't see a meaning in it at all.