And yet the world we live in-its divisions and conflicts, its widening gap between rich and poor, its seemingly inexplicable outbursts of violence-is….

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

Many of the principle weapons that the Nazis used during World War II had their first trial in combat in Spain - the Messerschmitt 109 fighter plane ….

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 ….

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

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….

The late Nadine Gordimer in South Africa, for example, had a wonderful ability to get her country's injustices and contradictions down on paper. Ditt….

You know, by 1936, Hitler was already talking very loudly about his desire to expand to the east. Mussolini, in 1935, went and then in the next year,….

Even [Ernst] Hemingway, perhaps the most intentionally non-political of American writers, became passionately partisan during the Spanish Civil War..

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….

Some 2,800 Americans went to Spain [during the Spanish Civil War], and it was, by far, the largest number of Americans before or since who've ever jo….

One of my favourite contemporary fiction writers is a Texan, Ben Fountain. His extraordinary novel, Billy Lynn's Long Half-Time Walk, all takes place….

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 huma….

Growing inequality is a huge problem, and of course is intimately connected to xenophobia and racism..

I think [George] Orwell is right. There are certainly moments when political differences appear minor, and someone can claim to be non-political or t….

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

All of us living in today's world are facing an enormous crisis - arguably the greatest that humanity has ever faced - in the form of man-made global….

Things have gotten openly more extreme in the last few years. I was lecturing in Hungary, whose prime minister, Victor Orban, is an example of this t….

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

I'm after a snake and please God I'll scotch it..

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 ….