Reality is a powerful solvent.

I don't believe that one should have one-size-fits-all moral rules for international political action.

Words can make the illness a subject I can master, and not one that one simply emotes over.

I worry that we have forgotten that the de-ideologized, de-politicized, uncontentious public space of the last 50 years as Europeans have experienced it is not the normal human condition. We shall be sorry to have abandoned a little too quickly the institutions that were set up by our parents and grandparents to protect themselves against a return of the bad old world. Because the bad old world can still come back to haunt you.

Social democracy does not represent an ideal future; it does not even represent the ideal past.

I was born accidentally. I lived accidentally in London. We nearly migrated to New Zealand. So much of my life has been a product of chance, I can't see a meaning in it at all.

Apparently, the line you take on Israel trumps everything else in life.