Getting to know someone else involves curiosity about where they have come from, who they are.

I've always been fascinated by the operation of memory - the way in which it is not linear but fragmented, and its ambivalence.

The present hardly exists, after all-it becomes the past even as it happens. A tricky medium, time - and central to the concerns of fiction.

We all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from.

Look at the bark of a redwood, and you see moss. If you peer beneath the bits and pieces of the moss, you'll see toads, small insects, a whole host of life that prospers in that miniature environment. A lumberman will look at a forest and see so many board feet of lumber. I see a living city.

If you're serious about climate targets, you don't build and expand the oil sands and move from coal-fired electricity to inefficient fracked gas.

The idea that we have the capacity to change or stop the climate, I'm just skeptical.

We must recognize that Small Island Developing States are particularly vulnerable to climate change, natural disasters, and external shocks.