“Compared with how we’ve ducked it in the United States, Canada should be really proud of how you have welcomed a significant number of refugees – far more, in fact, than we Americans have, even though our population is vastly larger.”

Newt Gingrich seldom misses a chance to note that he is a historian.

In the form of man-made global warming; one can’t be neutral at such a moment. It’s like claiming to be neutral if you’re living in Germany in 1933.

The Messerschmitt 109 fighter plane for example, the Stuka dive bomber, the 88 millimeter artillery piece, which could be used both for antiaircraft purposes and also shelling on the ground.

No one has better summed up the American appetite for spectacle, the link between sports and politics, and the absolute madness of George W. Bush’s Iraq War.

I think writers can respond by writing about the refugee crisis, by looking at problems faced by migrants, by trying hard to portray them as the human beings that they are.

And he learned a great deal from it about the strengths and weaknesses of these different weapons.

Ditto for her countryman the great playwright Athol Fugard.

If your real wages are declining, your job is at risk, you fear your children will be worse off than you are

Someday, I have no doubt, the dead from today’s wars will be seen with a similar sense of sorrow at needless loss and folly as those millions of men who lie in the cemeteries of France and Belgium

Work is hard. Distractions are plentiful. And time is short.

And American soldiers were the victims of these things in Spain, American volunteers. So this war was really a testing ground for Hitler.

I think in many ways, the Spanish Civil War was the first battle of World War II.

You’ve got politicians in power or vying for power who are taking tactics and elements of their appeal from the playbook of fascism.

Zachary Macaulay, who once traveled on a slave ship across the Atlantic, taking notes.

Leopold’s Congo is but one of those silences of history.

Ronald Reagan perfected the subtler version long ago by talking about “welfare mothers” – a code phrase for people of colour.

Standing even for a short time proves exhausting compared with walking and running though it be for a long time … Nature delights and is restored by alternating and varied actions.

In the States, there has been, compared to the Sixties and Seventies, a huge retrenchment – not just in poetry – into the personal.

If you teach, you see this is not true. It may be that newer generations do not worship the text as some of their elders do.

A thorn in the flesh is nothing compared to a thorn in the conscience.

The Mafia and crime bosses of this world are amateurs compared to this syndicate.

Let’s just hope market forces don’t send short fiction the way of the dinosaur, because their sales are paltry compared to the novel and this is truly unfortunate.

Prison’s a walk in the park compared with being sectioned, mate, it really is.

Happy insect! what can be In happiness compared to thee? Fed with nourishment divine, The dewy morning’s gentle wine!