"However good you may be you have faults; however dull you may be you can find out what some of them are, and however slight they may be you had better make some - not too painful, but patient efforts to get rid of them."

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Another problem about writing about politics in the "age of globalization" is that so much of the violence in the form of war and also in the forms of institutional violence - sweatshops, child labor, victimization of people economically - happens elsewhere and out of sight. And when we do know about it and need to witness it, it's always mediated by images of one kind or another, so you're kind of stuck trying to write about what it's like trying to be you living your life thinking about and experiencing this stuff in that way.

— Robert Hass