Undoubtedly the Afghans must be, by our standards, the best-looking people in the world. They have everything height, proportions, carriage, features and complexion.

... strong bonds are forged in high emotional temperatures.

It is far easier to explain to a three-year-old how babies are made than to explain the processes whereby bread or sugar appear on the table.

... I know a number of Western children who would benefit greatly if only someone were primitive enough to inhibit the development of their personalities.

Buying a bicycle is a momentous event, akin to marriage: you are acquiring a partner.

hatred, however apparently justifiable, excusable or inevitable, always damages the hater.

The more I see of life in these 'undeveloped countries' and of the methods adopted to 'improve' them, the more depressed I become. It seems criminal that the backwardness of a country like Afghanistan should be used as an excuse for America and Russia to have a tug-of-war for possession.

apartheid still hangs in the air like a poisonous cloud left over from chemical warfare.

On my tenth birthday a bicycle and an atlas coincided as gifts, and a few days later I decided to cycle to India...However, I was a cunning child so I kept my ambition to myself, thus avoiding the tolerant amusement it would have provoked among my elders.

[On Addis Ababa:] Among the city's handicaps are an immaturity for which no one can be blamed, as it was founded only eighty years ago, and a proliferation of architectural excesses for which many people can and should be blamed.

poverty denotes a lack of necessities and simplicity a lack of needs.

There are two phases of enjoyment in journeying through an unknown country - the eager phase of wondering interest in every detail, and the relaxed phase when one feels no longer an observer of the exotic, but a participator in the rhythm of daily life.

Is this something else our age does - on the one hand make communication easier than ever before, while on the other hand widening the gulf between those who are 'developed' and those who are not?

I wonder if those experts who tell us that our sexual appetite is the strongest know what real thirst feels like I can imagine the desire for water driving someone to commit a crime to which sexual desire could never drive them.