In one way, I fear all Damascus is a dungeon. Or do you have to live here to appreciate that?

It's a journalist's job to be a witness to history. We're not there to worry about ourselves. We're there to try and get as near as we can, in an imperfect world, to the truth and get the truth out.

Tanks come in two forms: the dangerous, deadly kind and the "liberating" kind.

The Syrian army is tired of corruption. It is tired of party nepotism. It is becoming very angry with those it blames for the war.

Refuse to accept the narrative of history laid down by presidents, prime ministers, generals and journalists.

Everyone outside the Roman Empire was called a barbarian. Everyone outside Obama’s empire is called a terrorist.

War is primarily not about victory or defeat but about death and the infliction of death. It represents the total failure of the human spirit.

And it's true, you hear things in Damascus and, after a few hours, the human double-take stops operating.

Clinton impressed Assad: a young man who appeared to want to be neutral in the Arab-Israeli dispute - an illusion of course, but that's what Assad thought.

When I saw the pictures of New York without the World Trade Center, New York looked like a shadow of itself.

At the end of the day, bin Laden's interest is not Washington and New York, it's the Middle East. He wants Saudi Arabia. He wants to get rid of the House of Saud.

How you spend your energy is ultimately what creates who you

If you sing a song, you never be sad.

Likewise 'radical'. I'm only radical because the architectural profession has got lost. Architects are such a dull lot - and they're so convinced that they matter.

Gift to the creative artist: positive images in, positive images out. On the other hand, garbage in, garbage out.

I think there's a big misconception out there about actors and the choices they have.

Am I not ninja enough? Are you saying that I lack ninja?

We're all hoping that Trump doesn't get our world on his terms because there won't be anything of it left. Trump is a true psychopath, a psychopath in the way that tragedy becomes tragedy.

I do usually stay in the fantasy/sci-fi range, I suppose, but it has many, many subgenres that I'd love to continue exploring.

Flattery in courtship is the highest insolence, for whilst it pretends to bestow on you more than you deserve, it is watching an opportunity to take from you what you really have.

The organic laws of construction tangled me in my desires, and only with great pain, effort, and struggle did I break through these 'walls around art.