Saskia’s bedroom is messy and cramped, but in an eccentric, smart way. Books are stacked all over the floor, but her bookshelf is empty, suggesting that she is the kind of person who reads seventy-five books at once.

Since then the paper became aware of fresh allegations that suggest quite clearly these incidents were not isolated. So there's a serious question over it . . . and it becomes a public interest matter.

You start to feel panic, because you realise that human beings are possessed by the idea that they must fill the world with objects and ideas that will outlive them, and you suddenly glimpse the fires that burn below human despair.

Nobody in rich countries wants to face responsibility for the lives of people in poor countries. They just want cheap groceries.

I’d like to have a life where people don’t monitor my movements, even accidentally. I’d like to have my own pots and pans. I’d like a table to place a bowl of fruit on. I have an idea of myself walking around markets where butchers and grocers shout prices over the crowds, and where I’ll carefully and slowly choose vegetables and meat, and come home to cook myself meals. I’d like to have breakfast without having to get dressed. I’d like to wander in and out of rooms and take a bath with the door open. And I don’t want to look out the window of a little room and wonder where, in the city, I’ll end up. The most essential quality of hotel life is the thing I want least: a presumption of departure.

After a while you learn what you once considered monolithic is infinitely intricate.