In both places [Paraguay and Newfoundland] people rise despite everything - both are pretty tough environments.

Originally I wanted to be a diplomat, and by attrition I started giving up that idea.

There are 60 million of us [britains] crammed into an area the size of a state. So you don't have that feeling of remoteness at all, ever. And that's reflected in the way our media works, and so on.

I tend to prefer traveling in the Third World countries. Like Ethiopia. Or Eritrea.

Paraguay has had a U.S. supermarket boss as its ambassador for a while. He did the job well. He was there because he wanted to be there. Rather than the British diplomat who didn't want to be there.

I don't want to pay good money to hear ordinary people's lunatic views. Most of the people who phone in are [lunatics] - certainly in Britain.

This terrible frustration that we so often feel in the West in not being able to articulate and express ourselves.

I feel better off doing what I know how to do. I feel a strong element of fictional style in travel writing anyway. Some call it creative nonfiction.

I was talking to my publisher in Britain and was told here we are - we are sixty million people and we reckon only four hundred thousand people in Britain really read.

I find the public reaction to writing - it's fascinating in this modern age. Of course people are able to interact with me and email me, and I get quite a few I suppose.

One does have to learn to travel with a degree of humility and that reflected in writing and personality.

If you haven’t thought about quitting even once when working on your business, that business is not your real passion.

Statisticians tell us that people underestimate the sheer number of coincidences that are bound to happen in a world governed by chance.

Trouble is part of your life - if you don't share it, you don't give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough.

All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality - the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.

Forget trendy designer labels. Jeans, a sweater or a t-shirt worn under a jacket that seems welded to you. When it's just right, when you don't see the effort, it's irresistible.

No one ever understood disaster until it came.

Children do run from me. And so do some adults.

Before you condemn me my friends, I suggest you look deep inside you. For good and evil exists in us all.

Absolutely, it's a Sunni area. So the key here, once Ramadi is taken that you have the Sunni tribal fighters, Sunni police in there patrolling the city.

Usually my 'a-ha' moments are when I'm not trying to think of how to solve a particular problem.