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Fantasy is the tendency of Americans, going back to colonial times, to look at the Middle East as a type of fractured mirror of the United States - a type of mirror that could look a lot more like the United States, if, say, a Middle Eastern George Washington would emerge.

Ridding the world of poverty is, of course, a fantasy.

The Middle East is not part of the world that plays by Las Vegas rules: What happens in the Middle East is not going to stay in the Middle East.

I don't want to live in a fantasy world.

We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality. We create it to be able to stay.

The Middle East is ailing. The malady stems from pervasive violence, shortages of food, water and educational opportunities, discrimination against women and - the most virulent cause of all - the absence of freedom.

Fantasy is sort of a blank slate that everybody can project their own culture onto. Everybody can read it in their own way.

If you start to find that kind of luxury as a normal thing, you don't belong in the real world.

Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain.