Our philosophy precedes from the belief that sport is an inalienable part of the educational process and a factor for promoting peace, friendship, cooperation and understanding among peoples.

Olympism is the marriage of sport and culture.

I want to express my deepest apology to the athletes, the people of Salt Lake City in Utah and the millions of citizens worldwide who love and respect the games.

Olympism is a philosophy which, by blending sport with culture, seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal ethical principles.

The war on terror, if this is a war on terror, can only be won by a sincere regional and international cooperation. All have to believe they have something at stake and work together. In the absence of this it will become political and interest-oriented.

Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down.

Leaned on by Turkey and understandably wary of false equivalences - for not every death is a massacre, and not every war is genocidal - Israel connives in Armenian genocide denial.

The word war itself has a kind of glazing abstraction to it that conjures up bombs and bullets and so on, whereas my goal is to try to, so much as I can, capture the heart and the stomach and the back of the throat of readers who can lie in bed at night and participate in a story.