Punitive murder by the police and by vigilantes has existed in all societies at some point, and probably still exists in most.
Religion is close to theatre; much of its power comes from the effects of staging and framing.
A mob is not, as is so often said, mindless. A mob is single-minded.
One of the chief characteristics of a mob is its quickness. It is sudden. It pounces.
Throughout his career, W.G. Sebald wrote poems that were strikingly similar to his prose. His tone, in both genres, was always understated but possessed of a mournful grandeur.
When I write, I have a sort of secret kinship of readers in all countries who don't know each other but each of whom, when they read my book, feels at home in it. So I write for those readers. It's almost a sense of writing for a specific person, but it's a specific person who I don't know.
