Tanks come in two forms: the dangerous, deadly kind and the "liberating" kind.

It's a journalist's job to be a witness to history. We're not there to worry about ourselves. We're there to try and get as near as we can, in an imperfect world, to the truth and get the truth out.

The Americans may think they have 'liberated' Baghdad but the tens of thousands of thieves - they came in families and cruised the city in trucks and cars searching for booty - seem to have a different idea what liberation means.

U.S. journalists I don't think are very courageous. They tend to go along with the government's policy domestically and internationally. To question is seen as being unpatriotic, or potentially subversive.

When you have a crime against humanity that is so awesome in scale and death, it is more than permissible to look around and say, who recently has been declaring war on the United States? Of course, the compass points straight to bin Laden.

President Bush will come here and there will be new "friends" of America to open a new relationship with the world, new economic fortunes for those who "liberated" them.

Tanks come in two forms: the dangerous, deadly kind and the "liberating" kind.

I don't know what happens if they get bin Laden. I'm much more interested in what happens if they don't get bin Laden.

A businessman admits that he 'let go' an employee because he was a Sunni Muslim. You simply have to look after yourself, he explains. I am shocked, like a good Westerner should be.

And it's true, you hear things in Damascus and, after a few hours, the human double-take stops operating.

Bin Laden always wanted to get rid of Mubarek and Ben Ali and Gaddafi and so on, claiming that they were all infidels working for America, and in fact, it was millions of ordinary people who peacefully, more or less - certainly in the case of Tunisia and Egypt - got rid of them.

Clinton impressed Assad: a young man who appeared to want to be neutral in the Arab-Israeli dispute - an illusion of course, but that's what Assad thought.

Colleagues will malign you if you're a moderately successful journalist.

I do not make stories up, full stop.

I've never been embedded with American soldiers or British soldiers or Iraqi soldiers or any other.

In one way, I fear all Damascus is a dungeon. Or do you have to live here to appreciate that?

Israel lost its war. Will Assad's enemies lose, too?

It is always an eerie experience to sit among Bashar al-Assad's soldiers.

One of the reasons why I think people have gone from reading mainstream newspapers to the Internet is because they realize they're being lied to.

President Bush will come here and there will be new 'friends' of America to open a new relationship with the world, new economic fortunes for those who 'liberated' them.

Tanks come in two forms: the dangerous, deadly kind and the 'liberating' kind.

The Middle East is a land of great injustice. The Israelis can claim - or wish to, at least - that Lord Balfour's Declaration of 1917 promised Britain support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, which didn't just mean the left-hand bit that became Israel.

The Second World War is and was constantly being drudged up by Blair and Bush to rationalize the invasion of Iraq.

The Syrian army is tired of corruption. It is tired of party nepotism. It is becoming very angry with those it blames for the war.

The biggest problem I have in journalism is being quoted or misquoted and then being asked to defend something I haven't said.

The dead cannot speak. But hitherto unknown information has emerged from the confidential archives of the Syrian presidency and foreign ministry, published in a new book by Bouthaina Shaaban, who spent ten years as Hafez's interpreter and is still an adviser to his son Bashar.

The word 'democracy' and the name of Assad do not blend very well in much of Syria.

We are constantly trying to cope with what our fathers or our grandfathers did. I wrote the book 'Great War of Civilization,' and my father was a solider in the First World War which produced the current Middle East - not that he had much to do with that - but he fought in what he believed was the Great War for Civilization.

When I visited Syrian special forces along the front lines, I was given extraordinary amounts of detail. They gave me the code numbers for the various positions they've got, told me where the rebels were - about 800 meters away in a forest. I met soldiers who had been wounded but were still serving.

One of the reasons why I think people have gone from reading mainstream newspapers to the Internet is because they realize theyre being lied to.

Colleagues will malign you if youre a moderately successful journalist.

I think we'll still be operating coal in 2030. Whether we will be in 2040, I think, is a question, or in 2050.

In Los Angeles everyone is a star.

Those children who are beaten will in turn give beatings, those who are intimidated will be intimidating, those who are humiliated will impose humiliation, and those whose souls are murdered will murder.

The best thing is to always keep honest people around, because when you have a bunch of yes men around that know that you're making a mistake but let you go on with it, that's when it ruins your mind state as an artist.

Now I’m feeling how I should. Never knew single could feel this good.

I'm not one who likes to be honored, to be honest with you. That's never been who I am.

I go to this gym in Hollywood: it's a Cross Fit gym. It's basically just a really high intensity, sort of, athletic movements. I'm sure Cross Fit is going to be mad at me for not giving their definition of what Cross Fit is.

It is much easier to drive without having an accident.

I think a lot of programs, policies have been put in place since 9/11, have prevented a 9/11-style attack. On the other hand, I think the threat has become greater, not lesser.

With dancing, you have to know spatial movement with somebody. It is steps. It's literally steps and knowing how close to be or how far away. You have to have the beat in the right place with the camera.

There were times when I'd bench players for their lack of effort. We worked very hard on fundamentals, which was the Dodger way. We needed to be more aggressive.

Traditionally, the only way I come up with cartoons is by sitting at my desk and thinking.

Pride is essentially competitive in nature. We pit our will against God's.

It's a very hard thing for all of us to accept ourselves at all the different stages - the horrible side, the wonderful side, the adorable side - and who you are as a grownup. And then to bring what you learned as a child to that grownup: that is the magic of creativity.

I want him to see the flowers in my eyes and hear the songs in my hands.

Public employee unions are hardly the only group involved in bare-knuckles politics. Businesses lobby fiercely, and executives make hefty campaign donations.

Faced with destruction, the Jewish people survived.

The first clothing line I had was called Very Rue. Then we changed the name and moved to QVC, and the name became A Touch of Rue.