I have nothing to do with the selection of stories. I'm the reporter.

But in the first Gulf war the United Kingdom was not under any threat from Iraq, and is still less so in the second one. Then there is no justification for obstructing freedom of information, particularly as nations have a right to know what their soldiers are being used for.

Hair is also a problem. I remember once, when I was reporting from Beirut at the height of the civil war, someone wrote in to the BBC complaining about my appearance.

I also read modern novels - I have just had to read 60 as I am one of the judges for the Orange Fiction Prize.

I don't sit there and speculate. I'm not that sort of person. It wastes time, actually.

If I'm in danger then it's usually my fault and it's up to me to get myself out of it. I am not in it just to get an adrenalin rush. No way!

In Sierra Leone last year there was just the two of us hanging out of a helicopter and, when we were in Bosnia, I drove an armoured vehicle, thousands of miles.

My job is to get to the heart of a story, to find out what's really going on; to get it verified and, then, to get it out to as many people as possible as fast as.

Up until about 12 years ago we never, ever, wore flak jacket or helmets but now the nastiness has got worse.

No two wars are identical.

I will never retire.

The better the information it has, the better democracy works. Silence and secrecy are never good for it.

Now children as young as nine carry AK47s which can kill 30 people in seconds.

I don't want to be involved in endless media gossip.

People always seem to assume that we have a full, back-up support team - make-up, costume and a driver - but usually, in a war zone, there's only me and the cameraman.

I have never been attracted to any kind of violence.

I keep telling myself to calm down, to take less of an interest in things and not to get so excited, but I still care a lot about liberty, freedom of speech and expression, and fairness in journalism.

It's totally mistaken to suppose that an armed escort is going to give a journalist any protection - on the contrary, journalists who turn up surrounded by armed personnel are just turning themselves into targets and in even worse danger.

I have nothing to do with the selection of stories. I'm the reporter.

I was timid and frightened as a child. Yours truly did not shin up mountains or do any other kind of adventurous stuff.

It wasn't glamorous in my day. In the regions, reporters were seen as such low life that they didn't merit their name in the Radio Times. Now people are interested in being famous. I never gave it a thought.

I wrote in the book very specifically what I wanted to write about, period, and left it at.

I've never been one to sit around and eat my heart out. Life's too short.

I was sent to a nice Church of England girls' school and at that time, after university, a woman was expected to become a teacher, a nurse or a missionary - prior to marriage.

Beslan, where the Russian authorities stopped live coverage of the school being stormed, was an illustration of the progress we still have to make.

When you are covering a life-or-death struggle, as British reporters were in 1940, it is legitimate and right to go along with military censorship, and in fact in situations like that there wouldn't be any press without the censorship.

On the Northern Ireland question, for instance, the British and Irish governments prohibit media contact with members of the IRA, but we have always gone ahead, believing in the right to information.

I sailed through my childhood with a complete lack of any drama.

I have no time for the endless nostalgia: 'Oh gosh I used to . . . ' Life is too short; I don't have any time for sitting and saying I miss things. What's the point? Go and do something else.

War zones are dangerous, protests can be violent, also, natural disasters are difficult to cover, so there are going to be risks.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is. It is the American Dream.

Well, after I had the heart attack, it was a very simple choice. What the doctor told me I did and I did it religiously. I ate nothing but lean turkey breast or chicken breast or a piece of fish that was very lean. I mean I stayed away from everything.

My life is so full of surprises, nothing surprises me any more.

Excuses change nothing, but make everyone feel better.

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

They haul you up there for, you know, week after week in this kind of star chamber proceeding. Then at the end of it they say, well, we found nothing, but now it's time for special counsel.

Why are there beings at all, instead of Nothing?

Always, your work is the same: You have to tell a story, you have to make a character. It doesn't matter if there are thousands of dollars, millions behind it, or if there is nothing.

For years the Trio did nothing but play for musicians and other hip people. We practically starved to death.

There's nothing worse than talking about yourself to find out that you're not that interesting.

In the kingdom of heaven it is His work that will be crowned, not yours. Anything in you that He has not wrought Himself will count for nothing.

If nothing is to be done in the given situation, he must invent plausible reasons for doing nothing; and if something must be done, he must suggest the something. The unpardonable sin is to propose nothing, when action is imperative.

There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the Establishment - and nothing more corrupting.

There is sometimes a peculiar confusion in the West that equates progress to whatever is recent or whatever is new, and it is time we understood that progress has nothing to do with the chronology of an idea.

I think I had a more European outlook about the body and sex. The body is in no way dirty, and sex is something beautiful to give to and share with a lover. It has nothing to do with promiscuity, because I only believe in being in love with one man at a time.

Nothing is ever guaranteed, and all that came before doesn't predicate what you might do next.

There ain't nothing from the outside that can lick any of us.