Philip Gourevitch Quotes
The photographs of one dead terrorist mastermind carry no real news or information about the nature or horror of war. They just create sensation instead of deeper understanding.
What distinguishes genocide from murder, and even from acts of political murder that claim as many victims, is the intent. The crime is wanting to make a people extinct. The idea is the crime.
Genocide, after all, is an exercise in community building.
Political corruption is to Rhode Islanders as smog is to people who live in Los Angeles: nobody complains of its absence, but when it rolls around everyone feels right at home.
This is what fascinates me most in existence: the peculiar necessity of imagining what is, in fact, real.
I couldn't help thinking how well Cain had prospered after killing his brother: he founded the first city--and, although we don't like to talk about it all that much, we are all his children.
