I have always been full of lust - as I am now - but I have always been placing conceptual obstacles in my own path. - Susan Sontag

No book is worth reading once if it is not worth reading many times.

Because it is a world event — that is, because it affects the West — it is regarded as not just a natural disaster. It is filled with historical meaning. (Part of the self-definition of Europe and the neo-European countries is that it, the First World, is where major calamities are history-making, transformative, while in poor, African or Asian countries they are part of a cycle, and therefore something like an aspect of nature.)

Watkins said no with the practiced brusque delivery of a man who's always been rather sparing with his yes.