Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.

Being in love means being willing to ruin yourself for the other person.

To the militant, identity is everything.

The principal instances of mass violence in the world today are those committed by governments within their own legally recognized borders.

I'm extremely interested in the Russian formalists and have been for many years. I'm more drawn to their writing, which is expressive and literary, than to writing which is extremely academic or jargon-ridden.

Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.

Self-censorship, the most important and most successful form of censorship, is rampant. Debate is identified with dissent, which is in turn identified with disloyalty. There is a widespread feeling that, in this new, open-ended emergency, we may not be able to 'afford' our traditional freedoms.