Could anything justify the extermination of civilians on such a scale?

Could anything justify the extermination of civilians on such a scale?

Vietnamese must be made to feel that they are racial inferiors with no right to national identity.

And just as there was something of every Vietnamese in Ho Chi Minh so there is something of Ho Chi Minh in almost every present-day Vietnamese, so strong is his imprint on the Vietnamese nation.

Hiroshima had a profound effect upon me.

My anger with the US was not at first, that they had used that weapon - although that anger came later.

In this first testing ground of the atomic bomb I have seen the most terrible and frightening desolation in four years of war. It makes a blitzed Pacific island seem like an Eden. The damage is far greater than photographs can show.

It was necessary to bluff the Japanese camp commanders, with whatever authority I could muster, that I had come officially to ensure that the surrender terms were being complied with and that living conditions for the POWs were being immediately improved.

France turned a deaf ear to the demands, but Ho had succeeded in attracting great publicity in progressive French circles to the situation in Indochina.

Of thousands of others, nearer the centre of the explosion, there was no trace. They vanished. The theory in Hiroshima is that the atomic heat was so great that they burned instantly to ashes - except that there were no ashes.

The police chief of Hiroshima welcomed me eagerly as the first Allied correspondent to reach the city.

Ho joined the French socialist party, the first Vietnamese to be a member of a French political party.

Hundreds and hundreds of the dead were so badly burned in the terrific heat generated by the bomb that it was not even possible to tell whether they were men or women, old or young.

My emotional and intellectual response to Hiroshima was that the question of the social responsibility of a journalist was posed with greater urgency than ever.

As in all his subsequent dealings with France, Ho Chi Minh's demands were a model of modesty.

When you arrive in Hiroshima you can look around and for 25 and perhaps 30 square miles you can see hardly a building. It gives you an empty feeling in the stomach to see such man-made devastation.

Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller had passed over it and squashed it out of existence.

I always felt sorry for the sidekick as a kid. They never got their due and it left a very bad taste in the mouth - they are defined by a subordinate relationship to someone else. I always felt like a bit of sidekick when I was a kid and it didn't feel fair.

It is one of the oldest maxims of moral prudence: Do not, by aspiring to what is impracticable, lose the opportunity of doing the good you can effect!

I love wearing designer pieces with something I found at Target.

Whether it's music or acting, that creativity all comes from the same source.

On the one hand, the idea of marriage and the sort of traditional family life repulses me. But on the other hand, I long for it, you know what I mean? I'm constantly in conflict with things. And it is because of my past and my upbringing and the journey that I've been on.

I'm a huge fan of Kate Beckinsale. Sigourney Weaver gets me excited. Angelina Jolie... There's just so many women that do 'tough' really well.

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

Oblivion is full of people who allow the opinions of others to overrule their belief in themselves.

Sometimes it's hard to eat healthy on the road, especially on the days when we play fairs and festivals! There is lots of fried temptation there, and it's hard for this Southern girl to turn down some good fried food.

It makes me nuts, the idea that if you put a political struggle at the heart of your book, then it has to be that the author - me - is trying in some way to push my views onto my readers.

It's not a bad problem to have because a lot of classic acts are known for one or two songs and in their show they basically hold those songs off until the end and you sit through an hour or so of lesser known material but in our case most of the songs are well known.

If you think you have it tough, read history books.

LGBT Americans are full and equal citizens and deserve the rights of citizenship - that includes marriage.

I identified with Pip from 'Great Expectations,' especially when I was younger; I had the same kind of gaucheness and uncertainty.

There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it.

Managers tend to blame their turnover problems on everything under the sun, while ignoring the crux of the matter: people don't leave jobs; they leave managers.

When I played God Bless The Queen, I was wondering if they was gonna dig us, then quite naturally I'd go on and try to get it together.

War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society.

Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.

For 37 years I've practiced 14 hours a day, and now they call me a genius.

When engaged in eating the brain should be the servant of the stomach.

All the screen cowboys behaved like real gentlemen. They didn't drink, they didn't smoke. When they knocked the bad guy down, they always stood with their fists up, waiting for the heavy to get back on his feet. I decided I was going to drag the bad guy to his feet and keep hitting him.

I always admire people who do commercials because they have to put together a beginning, a middle, and an end in 30 seconds.

I found that I could write two kinds of short stories: I could write very absurd, kind of surrealistic, funny stories; or I could write very dark, realistic - hyper-realistic - stories. I was never happy with that, because I couldn't meld the two.