With fiction, you can talk about plot, character and narrative, whereas a poem brings home the fact that everything that happens in a work of literature happens in terms of language. And this is daunting stuff to deal with.

Language, identity and forms of life are the terms in which political demands are shaped and voiced.

Scratch a schoolboy and you find a savage.

Evil is often supposed to be without rhyme or reason.

Cynicism and naivety lie cheek by jowl in the American imagination; if the United States is one of the most venal nations on Earth, it is also one of the most earnestly idealistic.

In the end, it is because the media are driven by the power and wealth of private individuals that they turn private lives into public spectacles. If every private life is now potentially public property, it is because private property has undermined public responsibility.

It is capitalism, not Marxism, that trades in futures.