Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. - Susan Sontag

But the landscape of devastation is still a landscape. There is beauty in ruins.

Enemies are somewhere else, as the fighting is almost always “over there,” with Islamic fundamentalism now replacing Russian and Chinese communism as the implacable, furtive menace. And “terrorist” is a more flexible word than “communist.” It can unify a larger number of quite different struggles and interests. What this may mean is that the war will be endless — -since there will always be some terrorism.

A novel worth reading is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility, of what human nature is, of what happens in the world. It’s a creator of inwardness.