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

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.

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

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.

Defeat anger, stop using it as a shield against truth, and you will find the compassion you need to forgive the people you love.

Be nice to the environment. Be nice to animals. Be nice to people. If you do that, you will leave a mark on the world.

When we look back at life we realize no true moment defined us, but in fact the events leading up to that moment.

We don't get to see ourselves the way the Lord sees us, but we can choose to believe what He says about us.

Men need men to keep their edges hot and clean, whereas women keep us warm and soft.

Nothing supernatural has ever harmed me. My wounds and losses have all be at the hands of human beings...

People who are afraid of the truth never find it.

I'd rather see the world as a rainbow than endless shade of gray.

Jesus could weep. Sometimes when you look at the ugliness that makes you weep, you know that the heart of God is also weeping. Jesus is for real. He does not give up on anyone, least of all on me.

There's no way to know what's going to happen.