They’re very quiet coffee shops, and there are some positions in which it’s easier to write. Somewhere there’s an outlet, and you can keep your back to people. I’ll write for about two hours and then get up and walk with my iPad to the next coffee shop, about 10 minutes away. When you walk, you get a little fresh air, and I’ve heard moving around is good for you while writing. When you write in an office or at home, you end up sleeping. You can’t sleep at a cafe since you can’t lie down. I think that’s good, and it’s become a habit. I wrote Parasite half in Seoul and half in Vancouver.

Until this time I had never been able to drink whisky. I disliked the flavour intensely. I could not understand how so many of my brother officers were so often calling for a whisky and soda. I liked wine, both red and white, and especially champagne; and on very special occasions I could even drink a small glass of brandy. But this smoky-tasting whisky I had never been able to face. ... Once one got the knack of it, the very repulsion from the flavour developed an attraction of its own; and to this day, although I have always practised true temperance, I have never shrunk when occasion warranted it from the main basic standing refreshment of the white officer in the East.

The great singer Um Kulthum (actually named Kawkab Elsharq – a superstar of the East) had a major influence on my appreciation of music. On the first Thursday of each month we listened to Um Kulthum's concert – "waslats" (three songs) – for more than three hours. During all of my study years in Egypt, the music of this unique figure gave me a special happiness, and her voice was often in the background while I was studying mathematics, chemistry… etc. After three decades I still have the same feeling and passion for her music.

The two things that I miss most when living out of Australia are the bush and the Pacific coast, especially fishing in the surf at night! My father had a workshop and I learned to be a carpenter, a skill that has resulted in the manufacture of some very substantial coffee tables and a fair amount of time working on houses.

Of the sweets of adversity, and let me say that these are not numerous, I have found the sweetest, the most precious of all, is the lesson I learnt on the value of kindness.

If I advocate cautious optimism it is not because I do not have faith in the future but because I do not want to encourage blind faith.

Every kindness I received, small or big, convinced me that there could never be enough of it in our world. To be kind is to respond with sensitivity and human warmth to the hopes and needs of others. Even the briefest touch of kindness can lighten a heavy heart.

It takes courage to feel the truth, to feel one's conscience because once you do, you must engage your fundamental purpose for being alive. You can't just expect to sit idly by and have freedom handed to you.

As you look at me and listen to me, please remember the often repeated truth that one prisoner of conscience is one too many.

Even if we do not achieve perfect peace on earth, because perfect peace is not of this earth, common endeavours to gain peace will unite individuals and nations in trust and friendship and help to make our human community safer and kinder.