“If spectacle is lacking in everyday life, it may be because we have forgotten where and how to look.”

“The spectacle takes us away from our routines. For at least a time, we feel part of something big, colorful, exciting. It is perhaps understandable that civilians are often more enthusiastic during...”

“For Achilles, the death of Patroclus pushed him into a fury, but it was not only grief that drove him. It was also a sense of shame and guilt because he had not been there to protect his friend. So...”

“For many people, that war [WWII] is called the good war because it was fought against a regime guilty of unspeakable atrocities. But the Allies did not enter the war to save Jews from extermination...”

“The Great Stone at the center of the Somme memorial has this inscription: Their name liveth for evermore. The memorial contains 73,077 names, the names of young men who were robbed of life. Note th...”

“[W]e would do better to treat terrorists as common criminals, people who have broken the laws recognized by all civil societies. To treat them as soldiers is to increase their power, respectability...”

“For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”

“The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butcher...”

“Genocide, after all, is an exercise in community building.”

“Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.”

“If we bear all this suffering and if there are still Jews left, when it is over, then Jews, instead of being doomed, will be held up as an example.”

“Fiction cannot recite the numbing numbers, but it can be that witness, that memory. A storyteller can attempt to tell the human tale, can make a galaxy out of the chaos, can point to the fact that ...”