This bill, this badly named ENLIST Act, would put out the advertisement that says, 'Sneak into America. Sneak into the military, and that's going to be the most expeditious path to American citizenship and the whole smorgasbord of benefits that come from American citizenship.'

That's the key: get the constitution in place. Get rule of law in place, capital will come, electricity will follow.

Equal justice under the law, even if it's your mother. That was a point of admiration in our household. It was drilled into me.

Western civilization is the most successful civilization the world has ever seen. And some of the reasons for that is it's borrowed from other cultures along the way, back to Mosaic law, the Greek age of reason, Roman law and the Roman order of government, and the Republican form of government, by the way that we're guaranteed in our constitution.

Almost every time I am in a lectureship on a college campus, young people will say, If there is a God and if he is a loving and merciful God, how do you explain the problems of suffering and death and all the tragedies that happen to people?

I've been married to the same man - even after the separation - longer than most people in this business. I'm sick to death of people mentioning it.

I think what I was unconsciously expressing in 'Black Rainbow' was a very abstract and metaphorical grief, in the way I had suppressed my grief about my mother dying. In retrospect I realise I started writing 'Mandy' as a sort of antidote to that, to sort of express those emotions, to purge that grief.

The history of the world is the record of the weakness, frailty and death of public opinion.