We have always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.

The English know how to make the best of things. Their so-called muddling through is simply skill at dealing with the inevitable.

The blurring of fantasy and reality is something that the Japanese herald in their life, in their day-to-day commercialism.

The Pashtun tribes are always engaged in private or public war. Every man is a warrior, a politician and a theologian. Every large house is a real feudal fortress....Every family cultivates its vendetta; every clan, its feud....Nothing is ever forgotten and very few debts are left unpaid.

The maxim of the British people is 'business as usual.'

I always seem to get inspiration and renewed vitality by contact with this great novel land of yours which sticks up out of the Atlantic.