It sure is a rising tide, and we have a particularly nasty exemplar of it in the U.S., in Donald Trump.

Work is hard. Distractions are plentiful. And time is short.

Growing inequality is a huge problem, and of course is intimately connected to xenophobia and racism.

The first World War in so many ways shaped the 20th century and really remade our world for the worse.

A pioneer in this genre [ writing about the refugee crisis] : the book A Seventh Man, by the great John Berger, decades ago evoked the lives of migrant workers in Europe.

Even [Ernst] Hemingway, perhaps the most intentionally non-political of American writers, became passionately partisan during the Spanish Civil War.

No international court can ever substitute for a working national justice system. Or for a society at piece.

I think one thing writers can do is point out that you don't have to say openly racist things, like [Donald] Trump, to be a racist or a xenophobe.

Ronald Reagan perfected the subtler version long ago by talking about "welfare mothers" - a code phrase for people of colour.

I think writers can respond by writing about the refugee crisis, by looking at problems faced by migrants, by trying hard to portray them as the human beings that they are.

I'm after a snake and please God I'll scotch it.

If any honor existed in war, it was in fighting to protect others from harm

If you want to be productive, follow leads and dig. Whether it is for oil, gold or information, it requires action - your action. Question authority. Do it yourself.

Kicked wide of the goal with such precision

Reportage is interesting only when placed in a fictional context, but fiction is interesting only if it is validated by a documentary context.

Punk became a circus didn't it? Everybody got it wrong. The message was supposed to be: Don't follow us, do what you want!

I knew I really had to put down a good run. I played it safe, and took risks when I could, and I came in the fastest, I guess.

Who knows where the talent goes? Sometimes it goes where the money is. Sometimes I think writers are really interested in the glory.

Dancing may not be the perfect substitute for love, human love, but it certainly requires all the time and thought and energy that could otherwise be dedicated to love.

What is new is not always true, and what is true is not always new.