Getting and spending we lay waste our powers.

To protect people's lives and keep our children safe we must implement public-works spending and do so proudly. If possible I'd like to see the Bank of Japan purchase all of the construction bonds that we need to issue to cover the cost. That would also forcefully circulate money in the market. That would be positive for the economy too.

I always had this non-stop drive. I had to keep sending stories out and every once in awhile I'd get something accepted or get the little trickle of positive feedback.

You have to listen to the people who have a negative opinion as well as those who have positive opinion. Just to make sure that you are blending all these opinions in your mind before a decision is made.

I have a lot of nice Italian winter clothes that make me look like a sophisticated Lebanese professor so my friend Robert and I go around pretending to be experts in Arabic politics. It doesn't work in the summer though. I don't have the right clothes.

Talk of citizenship today is often thin and tinny. The word has a faintly old-fashioned feel to it when used in everyday conversation. When evoked in national politics it's usually accompanied by the shrill whine of a descending culture-war mortar.

I still love following and thinking about politics. I enjoy recommending important journalism I read or see from other sources.

Poetry always runs away from you - it's very difficult to grasp it and every time you read it depending on your conditions you will have a different grasp of it. Whereas with a novel once you have read it you have grasped it.

It is one of my pet hates when I see players who have agents who do everything for them. They don't know how to set up their own bank accounts they don't know what they are spending their money on and they can't make their own decisions.

Without peace and without the overwhelming majority of people that believe in peace defending it working for it believing in it security can never really be a reality.