Since the time of Homer every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.
I deal with cultural issues whether they be in the Middle East, Far East, the Orient or the West. You broach questions in the context of their culture and then present Christian answers.
In the West, we look at art through life. Well, that's one way of living. In the Orient they look at life through art. They even drink their tea without sugar, for the same reason that they don't like a lot of frilly decorations on a painting. I can't stand butter on my bread for the same reason. I'm allergic to goo and rococo.
I enjoy writing about people falling in love, probably because I think the first time you fall in love is the first time that you have to figure out how you're going to orient your life. What are you going to value? What's going to be most important to you? And I think that's really interesting to write about.
There is a lot of luck in football. Following England is like following Wycombe Wanders or Leyton Orient. You hope for the best and hope you are lucky.
No white group has founded a major religion on this planet. The major religious were started in the Orient and the Middle East, not in Greece and Rome. I always knew you racists didn't have a prayer.
A lot of my poems either have historical sequences or other kinds of chronological grids where I'm locating myself in time. I like to feel oriented, and I like to orient the reader at the beginning of a poem.
Who knows who will be on board? A couple of spies, for sure. At least one grand duke; a few beautiful woman, no doubt very rich and very troubled. Anything can happen and usually does on the Orient Express.
I had a nutty career. I was living in New York. Then I got to an age where my friends and sister were having children, and I started to think I needed to orient myself towards a world where it could happen.
I've always been a secret locked-room fanatic. I read my first one when I was about ten or 11, Agatha Christie's 'Murder on the Orient Express,' with David Niven and Peter Ustinov on the cover.