On “genocide”: “I did not understand the point of the word genocide then. I resent and revile it now. The word is tidy and efficient. It holds no true emotion. It is impersonal when it needs to be intimate, cool and sterile when it needs to be gruesome. The word is hollow, true but disingenuous, a performance, the worst kind of lie. It cannot do justice--it is not meant to do justice--to the thing it describes.”

“It can't explain a child playing dead in a pool of his father's blood. The experience of a mother forever wailing on her knees. It cannot explain the never-ending pain, even if you live. You cannot bear witness with a single word".

“All those countries that ended World War II by saying ‘never again’ turned their backs.”

“Our minds are malleable. Our minds can be possessed - possessed so gradually that we don’t even realize we’ve lost control.”