I think it's dangerous to be optimistic. Things could go terribly wrong virtually overnight.

There seems to be this sense among even well-meaning Americans that Africa is this black hole of murder and mutilation that can never be fixed, no matter what aid is brought in.

There is an element of anger among women who've been raped. There's certainly a major element of humiliation. But it really does seem like a medical condition of shock and horror.

Random violence is incredibly infectious.

There isn't a political price to be paid yet for doing nothing. People need to get upset with President Bush. People need to get upset with their Congressmen.

There are other issues I have felt more emotionally connected to, like China, where I lived and worked for some time. I was living there when Tiananmen Square erupted.

You will be judged in years to come by how you responded to genocide on your watch.

You would see people going back to homes that had been burned, putting thatch over their structures again. They still couldn't leave the area without the danger of men being killed or women being raped, but it was a start.

A little bit of attention can go a long way.

A few countries like Sri Lanka and Honduras have led the way in slashing maternal mortality.

The bulk of the emails tend to come after a column. I can get about 2,000 after a column.

Neither left nor right has focused adequately on maternal health.

I have often tried to tell the story of a place through people there.

Every year 3.1 million Indian children die before the age of 5, mostly from diseases of poverty like diarrhea.

Just a little help, a small security force, a bit of food, can save lives.

If President Bush is serious about genocide, an immediate priority is to stop the cancer of Darfur from spreading further, which means working with France to shore up Chad and the Central African Republic.

The conflict in Darfur could escalate to where we're seeing 100,000 victims per month.

It's easy to keep issuing blame to Republicans or the president.

Neither Western donor countries like the U.S. nor poor recipients like Cameroon care much about Africans who are poor, rural and female.

The world spends $40 billion a year on pet food.

The photos were taken by African Union soldiers. People in Congress saw them. I thought if people could see them, there would be public outcry. No one would be able to say, We just didn't know what was going on there.

I try to be careful about wording. One of the things I've tried to combat in my blog is the notion that journalists are arrogant and unconcerned with the readership.

Abortion politics have distracted all sides from what is really essential: a major aid campaign to improve midwifery, prenatal care and emergency obstetric services in poor countries.

I think it's dangerous to be optimistic. Things could go terribly wrong virtually overnight.

The fact that people will pay you to talk to people and travel to interesting places and write about what intrigues you, I am just amazed by that.

The U.N. Population Fund has a maternal health program in some Cameroon hospitals, but it doesn't operate in this region. It's difficult to expand, because President Bush has cut funding.

All of a sudden their husband's dead and maybe a child is dead and they have absolutely nothing - and they're heading through the desert at night.

The north of the Central African Republic is now a war zone, with rival armed bands burning villages, kidnapping children, robbing travelers and killing people with impunity.

Most of the villagers were hiding in the bush, where they were dying from bad water, malaria and malnutrition.

Half a million women die each year around the world in pregnancy. It's not biology that kills them so much as neglect.

It really is quite remarkable that Darfur has become a household name. I am gratified that's the case.

The news media's silence, particularly television news, is reprehensible. If we knew as much about Darfur as we do about Michael Jackson, we might be able to stop these things from continuing.

One of the things that really got to me was talking to parents who had been burned out of their villages, had family members killed, and then when men showed up at the wells to get water, they were shot.

As soon as I was old enough to drive, I got a job at a local newspaper. There was someone who influenced me. He wrote a column for The Guardian from this tiny village in India.

While Americans have heard of Darfur and think we should be doing more there, they aren't actually angry at the president about inaction.

We all might ask ourselves why we tune in to these more trivial matters and tune out when it comes to Darfur.

You don't need to invade a place or install a new government to help bring about a positive change.

You should never feel comfortable. There is something wrong if you are. You should always feel under threat, on the edge of your seat and pushing yourself. Win one and you want to win more. It's never-ending.

Our military commanders have said over and over again that a timetable for withdrawal sends the wrong message to our troops, but more importantly to our enemy.

Singularity shows something wrong in the mind.

There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.

When women go wrong, men go right after them.

I've seen many actors go awry by making the wrong choices early on.

By the way, the secret of speaking French is confidence. Whether you are right or wrong, you don't hesitate.

So my idea of neurotic is spending too much time trying to correct a wrong. When I feel that I'm doing that, then I snap out of it.

There is a contest old as Eden, which still goes on - the conflict between right and wrong, between error and truth. In this conflict every human being has a part.

The Germans certainly - the intelligence service believed that there were WMD. It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing.

Hope is generally a wrong guide, though it is very good company by the way.

My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true. The intellect is only a bit and a bridle.