"I don't know why it is so much more pleasurable to read a book on a train coach than in an armchair at home. There must be a parallel between one's life and one's book, each of them pleasingly held in suspense as they roll through possibilities. The be in that parenthetical state between Point...

"Writers are often misled by the exoticness of foreign places. Their perceptions are distorted by it. As a result, they don't consider the people they meet there as truly human in an everyday sense that they would ascribe to people 'back home.' So when I'm reporting an international story I do my best to strip...