For many years it seemed as if nothing changed in Norway. You could leave the country for three months travel the world through coups d'etat assassinations famines massacres and tsunamis and come home to find that the only new thing in the newspapers was the crossword puzzle.

I am traveling less in order to be able to write more. I select my travel destinations according to their degree of usefulness to my work.

What I like in this job is you can travel to many places many imaginations.

There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.

For a long time many believed that there would be an automatic adjustment and counted on a rapid increase in the wages of the emerging nations on our advances in technology and the costs of transport preventing disruption. But this reassuring analysis is out of date.

Without any doubt at all teacher quality is the fundamental differentiator. Not just incidentally of education but I would argue probably the biggest single differentiator of success for the nations of the 21st Century.

Interest does not tie nations together it sometimes separates them. But sympathy and understanding does unite them.

Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy who are as ignorant of each other's habits thoughts and feelings as if they were dwellers in different zones or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.

The first condition of success for the League of Nations is therefore a firm understanding between the British Empire and the United States of America and France and Italy that there will be no competitive building up of fleets or armies between them.

Each particular society begins to feel its strength whence arises a state of war between different nations.