I am no apologist for Fidel's [Castro] regime. It is, after all, a totalitarian regime. So I would like to see that change.

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

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

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.

It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul.

The failure of one regional bank, assuming it is following a traditional model, will not threaten the entire system.

So I, I knew something in a business sense about semiconductors and I appreciated their possibilities.

I'm an obvious example of how everyone is spiraling out of control on the show and just trying to live life the best they can without destroying themselves.

I was once a student in a punk T-Shirt hooked on screwed-up scenarios. Thats how I became the esteemed cultural figure that I am today.

This is what I wanted to do from the very beginning: write songs and make records and tour them with a good live band.

People say children from broken homes have it hard, but the children of charmed marriages have their own particular challenges.

I'll listen to pretty much anything good, but I probably listen to more "electronic" music than anything else.

If I wish to engage, then the enemy, for all his high ramparts and deep moat, cannot avoid engagement; I attack that which he is obliged to rescue.