A profound political question is suddenly on the table: Must the country continue to give precedence to private financial gain and market determinism over human lives and broad public values?
For the speedy reader paragraphs become a country the eye flies over looking for landmarks, reference points, airports, restrooms, passages of sex.
If I can't take five years out to serve my country as president, then everything I've been singing about, like equal rights, doesn't mean anything.
Four years earlier I had been selected, with Kay Boyle, the writer, and a number of others, to go to Cambodia and come back and prove that there were no sanctuaries in that country.
Sometimes when you're in different countries, everything has become so homogenised and there's a Starbucks and McDonald's everywhere, and you could feel like you're in Florida. But in Japan, you know you're there.
That melting pot stuff was always more about what this country wanted to believe about itself than the way people really felt.
There's a general culture in this country to cut all the trees. It makes me so angry because everyone is cutting and no one is planting.
These people who come to Comic-Con and dress up - all across the country, the rest of the population who doesn't understand are scoffing at them.
I am in favor of helping the prosperity of all countries because, when we are all prosperous, the trade with each becomes more valuable to the other.
I don't like the idea of busing children all over the country. It's not safe. And there doesn't seem to be that much of an urgent need for it to be done.
My fate is in the hands of almighty Allah. I will deliver to the Gambian people and if I have to rule this country for one billion years, I will, if Allah says so.
Japan is the largest creditor country in the world, so we have made contributions to the stability of international markets and we want this IMF meeting to confirm that we will continue to contribute.
I represent my country, but I also represent the continent of Africa when I play in Europe. That's why it's important to try to achieve something big.
Sovereignty is a word that is used often but it has really no specific meaning. Sovereignty today is nominal. Any number of countries that are sovereign are sovereign only nominally and relatively.
I want to write more books, see my first novel made into a film, fight more campaigns, work in more countries. I want to be able to recall experiences that have endured for their pleasure and range and intensity.
Each person makes their own choice, but my spirit is meant to stay in Iran, especially with the work that I do, and with the emotional connection I have with the country - with all its difficulties, this is why I stay.
Building walls isn't going to work in the long run. Some people are happy with the wall in Israel, but somebody will get a weapon someday and knock it over or something. Walls aren't the answer between countries, though.
Certainly since then many people have taken a lot of those ideas and ridden them for years and years and made careers out of them. Part of that is willingness to do the kind of work that I wasn't willing to do. Get into a van and cover the country.
Millions of us, myself included, go back generations in this country, with ancestors who put in the painstaking work to become citizens. So we don't like the notion that anyone might get a free pass to American citizenship.
Crucially, I'd like to thank Labour party members up and down the country for sticking with us. For their active citizenship, their willingness to engage in our democracy, and for being there at the cutting edge of making our democracy work.
But we will say something else. That for far too long in this country, people who can work, people who are able to work, and people who choose not to work: you cannot go on claiming welfare like you are now.
