I know there are other writers who sit down religiously every morning, they take their espresso, they put a clean sheet of paper there and they sit looking at that paper until they've finished or covered at least a number of those pages. No, I'm not like that. I have to be ready. It has to gestate it for quite a while and then it's ready to burst forth.

Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.

There are different kinds of artists and very often, I'll be very frank with you, I wish I were a different kind.

Intolerance has become, I think, the reigning ideology of the world today, the intolerance versus intolerance and it's taken on lethal proportions.

We do not ask the mountain's aid to crack a walnut.

I think the epicentre of terrorism whether you call it cesspit or whatever you want to call it, shift, if you asked me a while ago, I would have said Somalia, Somalia has quietened a bit - and I think the epicentre right now is in Northern Nigeria.

Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there's a lot of work to be done.