My parents don't think about Europe at all. The Continent is somewhere else. And they call it the Continent - to reflect, they are no real part of it.

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.

Hope is not a sin, neither is fidelity.

Art sometimes imitates life. When it does, science fiction presages what form that life may take.

I wish the country had fewer lawyers and more engineers.

Talent comes with an individual name tag.

I love Israel for its blue and white flag as it matches my legs.

When one culture has the big guns and the other has none, there is a certain predictablity about the outcome.

There's no such thing, you know, as picking out the best woman: it's only a question of comparative badness, brother.

People say, ‘How is she a plus-size model?’ and I’m like, ‘Exactly, this is the point, how am I a plus-size model?

Two per cent. is genius, and ninety-eight per cent. is hard work.

Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends.