“I think [George] Orwell is right. There are certainly moments when political differences appear minor, and someone can claim to be non-political or to want to stay out of the fray, but today is not one of those moments.”

Speaking of Germany in 1933, I don’t think you can remove yourself from politics when, in so many countries – the United States, Poland, Hungary, and many others

You know, by 1936, Hitler was already talking very loudly about his desire to expand to the east.

No international court can ever substitute for a working national justice system. Or for a society at piece.

All over Budapest, statues have been replaced, museum exhibits have been redone, to turn ethnic Hungarians, not Jews, into the prime victims of the Germans during World War II.

In his fierce, bold determination to see the lives of modern-day slaves up close, Benjamin Skinner reminds me of the British abolitionist of two hundred years ago

Hitler and Mussolini jumped in on the side of Francisco Franco and his Spanish nationalists, sent them vast amounts of military aid, airplanes, tanks and Mussolini sent 80,000 ground troops as well.

Five years ago, who would have thought this possible?

Skinner goes everywhere, from border crossings to brothels to bargaining sessions with dealers in human beings

Many of the principle weapons that the Nazis used during World War II had their first trial in combat in Spain

I can certainly sympathize with writers who don’t want to put themselves or their loved ones at risk.

So people at the time really saw fascism not just as an evil but as an aggressive evil that seemed to be spreading.

It sure is a rising tide, and we have a particularly nasty exemplar of it in the U.S., in Donald Trump.

You can sense the vast inequalities of Tsarist Russia in [Anton] Chekhov and [Lev] Tolstoy.

Because they wanted a sympathetic ally in power. So I think it really was the opening act of World War II.

How many really great writers are there who are totally non-political? You can hear the French Revolution in the poetry of [Percy Bysshe] Shelly and [John] Wordsworth

A pioneer in this genre [ writing about the refugee crisis] : the book A Seventh Man, by the great John Berger, decades ago evoked the lives of migrant workers in Europe.

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water.

We each appear to hold within ourselves a range of divergent views as to our native qualities.. And amid such uncertainty, we typically turn to the wider world to settle the question of our significance.. we seem beholden to affections of others to endure ourselves.

I`m very cautious about what appears to be things put in place that will begin to roll back some of the progress that I believe we`ve made.

If a man must make himself appear cheerful; he must know why he is miserable.

It does not appear, nor is there any reason to believe that [ Jeff Sessions] will put policing reform front and center in the way that this justice department has.

I`m deeply concerned about Jeff Sessions, who has clearly expressed opposition to the use of consent decrees and has advanced a lot of this states` rights rhetoric.

I couldn’t think of anything less appealing than molding the minds of tomorrow’s leaders.