[O]ften art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten. . . .

Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time.

As Nelson Mandela has pointed out, boycott is not a principle, it is a tactic depending upon circumstances. A tactic which allows people, as distinct from their elected but often craven governments, to apply a certain pressure on those wielding power in what they, the boycotters, consider to be an unjust or immoral way.

It is not usually possible in a poem or a story to make the relationship between particular and universal fully explicit. Those who try to do so end up writing parables.

Ever since the Greek tragedies, artists have, from time to time, asked themselves how they might influence ongoing political events.

I wanted to write about looking at the world, so it's more about helping people, or persuading people, to see what is around us; both the marvellous and the terrible.

If the public photograph contributes to a memory, it is to the memory of an unknowable and total stranger.