Whatever your supposed politics are - left right - if you put it in a human connection most people will rise to the occasion and feel the human pain in a way that they might not if it was presented in a more conceptual way.

The enemy is not just terrorism. It is the threat posed specifically by Islamist terrorism by Bin Ladin and others who draw on a long tradition of extreme intolerance within a minority strain of Islam that does not distinguish politics from religion and distorts both.

Politics I supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

If a politician murders his mother the first response of the press or of his opponents will likely be not that it was a terrible thing to do but rather that in a statement made six years before he had gone on record as being opposed to matricide.

All the president is is a glorified public relations man who spends his time flattering kissing and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.

Because in fact women feminists do read my poetry and they read it often with the power of their political interpretation. I don't care that's what poetry is supposed to do.

And I know I'm supposed to feel guilty for wanting people to buy my books... and books in general? Novels and poetry they belong to the realm of art. How dirty of us to try to hawk art! But after a decade of hand-wringing and apologies I can't quite muster the guilt anymore.

This is probably why my life is easier and my family is very happy because we never lie each other. This is probably all people supposed to feel each other so be always in all of the world they'll be peace.

Are ideals confined to this deformed experiment upon a noble purpose tainted as it is with bargains and tied to a peace treaty which might have been disposed of long ago to the great benefit of the world if it had not been compelled to carry this rider on its back?

Hamas the opponents of Arafat the opponents of peace urged a boycott of the election and yet there was an 85 percent turnout where Hamas is supposed to be strong. Isn't that really quite incredible?