Violence always seems to me the worst form of tyranny. It deprives people of their rights, including the right to live.

In her novel Regeneration, Pat Barker writes of a doctor who 'knew only too well how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem of the human soul, for those whose cast of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.

Hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky.... hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency.

I roam around a lot in my territory, but what I learn at one end inflects and opens up my understanding at the other.

When I think about, say, 1995, or whever the last moment was before most of us were on the internet and had mobile phones, it seems like a hundred years ago. ... Time passed in fairly large units, or at least not in milliseconds and constant updates. A few hours wasn't such a long time to go between moments of contact with your work, your people or your trivia.

It's hardly surprising that the corporate aliens lie when it comes to the relationship between doing something about climate change and the economy.

Violence doesn't have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender.