After Iraq, There's Been Libya, There's Syria,

What Sort Of Love Is This Love That We Have For Countries? What Sort Of Country Is It That Will Ever Live Up To Our Dreams? What Sort Of Dreams Were These That Have Been Broken? Isn't The Greatness Of Great Nations Directly Proportionate To Their Ability To Be Ruthless, Genocidal? Doesn't The Height Of A Country's 'success' Usually Also Mark The Depths Of Its Moral Failure?

One Beach-colored. One Brown. One Loved. One Loved A Little Less.

To Love. To Be Loved. To Never Forget Your Own Insignificance. To Never Get Used To The Unspeakable Violence And The Vulgar Disparity Of Life Around You. To Seek Joy In The Saddest Places. To Pursue Beauty To Its Lair. To Never Simplify What Is Complicated Or Complicate What Is Simple. To Respect Strength, Never Power. Above All, To Watch. To Try And Understand. To Never Look Away. And Never, Never To Forget.

Fiction Is Truth. I Think Fiction Is The Truest Thing There Ever Was. My Whole Effort Is To Remove That Distinction. The Writer Is The Midwife Of Understanding. It's Very Important For Me To Tell Politics Like A Story, To Make It Real.

It's Very Easy For Me To Begin To Believe The Publicity About Myself, Whether For Or Against. It Can Give You An Absurd Idea Of Yourself. I Know That There's A Fine Balance Between Accepting Your Own Power With Grace And Misusing It. And I Don't Ever Want To Portray Myself As A Representative Of The Voiceless. I'm Scared Of That.