I think in a sense this is a house that was built on a bad foundation. And the foundation was the Americans coming here and allowing the sacking, burning and plunder of Baghdad, for whatever reason.

Charles Darwin, who had witnessed the atrocities perpetrated against Argentina’s native Indians by Juan Manuel de Rosas, had predicted that “the country will be in the hands of white Gaucho savages instead of copper-coloured Indians. The former being a little superior in education, as they are inferior in every moral virtue.

I think it's deeply important for us to know, especially when we come from the outside, how ordinary people think and feel and what their expectations are and what their concerns are. Also what's in their imaginations, what's in their minds, even what their rumors are and what their gossip is.

If you can find a way to confound people's prejudices, restore the humanity of people, individuals, you restore them to life.

You need to be hyper-aware because it's your survival at stake.

Che is not just a potent figure of protest, but the idealistic, questioning kid who exists in every society and every time.

How is it possible to live in world where people can rule millions of others? It's incredible! It's like we've gone back to the 12th century. That's what happens when you decapitate intelligentsia and repeatedly traumatize and brutalize a country for decades on end: you do not get virtue. Victims do not make nice people.

War is just what we do. Yet, of course, the effects of it are repeatedly deeper, then deeper, then deeper.