We live in an extraordinary time, in which one still has the ability to mold opinion. Also, it's up for grabs. Perceptions are up for grabs in a way that it hasn't been before, which makes it really interesting. Societies that have always defined other aspects of human experience, or histories, try to hold on to it and try to find ways to continue to be the ones who do the interpreting.

That's what's terrible about wars when whole societies adopt an impulse of objectification. Everything becomes black and white.

Life has become terribly insecure. It's on the vortex of civil war. It's difficult to know how America will bring it back from the brink and build up good will.

War is just what we do. Yet, of course, the effects of it are repeatedly deeper, then deeper, then deeper.

If you can find a way to confound people's prejudices, restore the humanity of people, individuals, you restore them to life.

I think that feeling of reward comes from being able to find sometimes an unexpected reflection or insight that seems to transcend the description itself, where you actually realize you're concluding something that is a point of view, that may come across and actually touch people's conscience or minds in a way that could change, at least if not things, change points of view.

I think it's deeply important for us to know, especially when we come from the outside, how "ordinary people" think and feel and what their expectations are and what their concerns are. Also what's in their imaginations, what's in their minds, even what their rumors are and what their gossip is.