For anyone to open their heart, they need the right atmosphere, and something to prompt them. For my mother it was her trip abroad: she was in a very relaxed, understanding environment. I was very sympathetic towards her.

I think because of their terrible past, particularly this century, the Chinese have come to accept cruelty more than many other people, which is something I feel very unhappy about.

I remember when my mother pointed to a stone, and she said this was the kind of stone people used to place on the feet of the baby girls to stop them trying to climb away and unbind their feet.

While I was writing Wild Swans I thought the famine was the result of economic mismanagement but during the research I realised that it was something more sinister.

I'm really lucky because I can sleep on planes. I wear an eye mask, I have a book, and I sit down and pass out pretty easily. I know that not everyone can. I think I'm good at it because I travel so much, and for me, being on planes is like a sacred time. It's the only time to zone out and meditate.

Frank Gehry not only understood my sense of fun and adventure but also reciprocated it and translated that feeling into his work.

The waves travel with the velocity of light and slightly squeeze and stretch space transverse to the direction of their motion. The first waves we measured came from the collision of two black holes each about 30 times the mass of our sun.

The mobile market is exploding and it makes perfect sense for a media company like ours to create a real content destination for the billions of cell-phone users around the world.