"No "we" should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people's pain." - Susan Sontag

If America is the culmination of Western white civilisation, as everyone from the Left to the Right declares, then there must be something terribly wrong with Western white civilisation.

Kindness, kindness, kindness.

I want to make a New year's prayer, not a resolution. I'm praying for courage.

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That means trying to understand, take in, connect with, what wickedness human beings are capable of; and not be corrupted — made cynical, superficial — by this understanding.