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.

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.'

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.

Now children as young as nine carry AK47s which can kill 30 people in seconds.

Missing you is worse than Pittsburgh.

Seeing the mud around a lotus is pessimism, seeing a lotus in the mud is optimism.

Those who love to live enjoy the beauty of life.

To have a breakthrough, you must consciously connect with the invisible forces that are everywhere around you, urging you to go beyond your old conditioning.

Hold fast to life and youth.

Obedience leads to true freedom. The more we obey revealed truth, the more we become liberated.

I think when you're an actor and you're drawing on your emotions all the time, you need to be quite steady.

The experience of space is not a privilege of the gifted few, but a biological function.

No book includes the entire world. It's limited. And so it doesn't seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that. There's so much other material to write about.

The root of evil is in the illusion that we are bodies. This, if any, is the original sin.