[his introduction to China in 1996] Beijing smelled of coal and garlic and work-stained wool and cheap tobacco. In a clap-trap taxi, with the windows sealed and the heat cranked up, the smell stuck to the roof of your mouth.
[on China in 2014] China's transformation - its extraordinary economic growth, to put it in perspective - is 100 times the scale and 10 times the speed of the first industrial revolution which transformed Britain.
[thoughts on the American social landscape in the summer of 2017] What is the precise moment in the life of a country when tyranny takes place? It rarely happens in an instant; it arrives like twilight and, at first, the eyes adjust.