Beslan, where the Russian authorities stopped live coverage of the school being stormed, was an illustration of the progress we still have to make.

People always seem to assume that we have a full, back-up support team - make-up, costume and a driver - but usually, in a war zone, there's only me and the cameraman.

On the Northern Ireland question, for instance, the British and Irish governments prohibit media contact with members of the IRA, but we have always gone ahead, believing in the right to information.

Hair is also a problem. I remember once, when I was reporting from Beirut at the height of the civil war, someone wrote in to the BBC complaining about my appearance.

I have no time for the endless nostalgia: 'Oh gosh I used to . . . ' Life is too short; I don't have any time for sitting and saying I miss things. What's the point? Go and do something else.'

My job is to get to the heart of a story, to find out what's really going on; to get it verified and, then, to get it out to as many people as possible as fast as.

I don't want to be involved in endless media gossip.

I was sent to a nice Church of England girls' school and at that time, after university, a woman was expected to become a teacher, a nurse or a missionary - prior to marriage.

The better the information it has, the better democracy works. Silence and secrecy are never good for it.

I never desired to go into war zones. I never had any thought about it. It sort of just happened as part of the job.

I wrote in the book very specifically what I wanted to write about, period, and left it at.

I think we each come out of the womb with some unique way of looking at the world and if we don't express it, we loose faith in ourselves.

Human milk is like ice cream, penicillin, and the drug ecstasy all wrapped up in two pretty packages.

Writers were a strange sort; I knew that much from the newspapers.

Pro wrestling has always been ingrained into American culture. It was one of the first things that was ever on television, so everybody watched it.

I challenge you, to go to any school and open 50 lunchboxes, and I guarantee you there will be one or two cans of Red Bull, there'll be cold McDonald's and jam sandwiches with several cakes.

[If Quebec became sovereign] there would be one level of government that would be missing, one less level of government. The municipality would become the second level.

I talk to the friends in my head on paper.

In the rest of the world though, particularly in Europe, the most popular form of racing is not stock cars. It's not NASCAR. It doesn't look anything like NASCAR. It's Formula 1.

The health of the people I love is all that really matters in this world. Period.

You know flexibility is a good thing but it shouldn't - you shouldn't be flexible on core principles.