I am reading "The Yellow Birds" by Kevin Powers and "Redeployment" by Phil Klay . Both Powers and Klay are Iraq War vets. Klay's stories are remarkable.

Ideology knows the answer before the question has been asked. Principles are something different: a set of values that have to be adapted to circumstances but not compromised away.

Inequality hardens society into a class system. Inequality divides us from one another... Inequality undermines democracy.

At the heart of the matter is a battle between wish and fear. Fear generally proves stronger than a wish, but it leaves a taste of disappointment on the tongue.

I think that bias is not a fixed thing. It's not as though some people are biased and others are not. It ebbs and flows. It can be manipulated. It changes according to a person's circumstances.

We will have a more just society as soon as we want one.

We have all the information in the universe at our fingertips, while our most basic problems go unsolved year after year...All around, we see dazzling technological change, but no progress.

Inequality saps the will to conceive of ambitious solutions to large collective problems, because those problems no longer seem very collective.

We all know who Donald Trump's talking to.

Character is destiny, and politicians usually get the scandals they deserve, with a sense of inevitability about them.

Twitter is crack for media addicts.

If you have to fall in love, fall in love with the magnificent beauty of a sunset. That love will beautify yourself and your world.

It’s tragic how the lack of imagination so often shapes our defeat.

The most distinguished persons become more revolutionary as they grow older.

...nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.

You say you're a writer but you're depressed. Not an excuse

I stood with my mom in the cemetery. She felt terrible pain. My grandmother is with God. My mom has to continue living. It’s not so easy, moving forward.

Why don't they just take him out?" I asked. I'm not politically minded, as I guess you can tell. Mr. Cataliades was smiling at me. "So direct, so classic," he said. "So American.

I drank that sentence and began to glow.

Fair and balanced is doublespeak for bite-out-chunks-of-truth until only irrelevancy is left, byte-sized, entertaining irrelevancy.

Doubt in my tradition is something that is very helpful. Because of doubt, you can thirst more and you will get a higher kind of proof.