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With European powers no new subjects of difficulty have arisen, and those which were under discussion, although not terminated, do not present a more unfavorable aspect for the future preservation of that good understanding which it has ever been our desire to cultivate.

There comes a time when what is needed is not just rhetoric, but boots on the ground.

The political environment we create matters because a disturbed person cannot always tell the difference between explosive rhetoric and explosive actions.

The artificial separation of politics and culture is nowhere more pronounced than in the discourse of foreign policy and international affairs.

When a country is strong... it accepts any dose of pessimism from its writers.

As I say, I'm a discourse advocate. What form it comes is less important to me than the fact that there is discourse.

The cloud of doubt that surrounds political figures tends to remain and never dissipate or be clarified.

Still, language is resilient, and poetry when it is pressured simply goes underground.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.