Lines in the Sand Quotes

“It's all too easy to sneer at war tourism. Appending the word 'tourism' to any activity diminishes it, makes it ersatz, collective, prearranged. But the desire to make travelling more than a purely hedonistic or childish experience in search of warmth and food is a good thing, and the desire to understand the struggles of nations and the deaths of youths on their behalf must be important.”
― A.A. Gill, Lines in the Sand: Collected Journalism

“The reason the Lampedusans are kind and good to these desperate visitors is because they can be. They've met them and they see them; the reason we can talk about "them" as a problem, a plague on our border, is because we don't see them. If any of these refugees knocked on any of our front door and asked for help, we would give it. We would insist they be protected and offered a chance to be doctors and civil engineers, nurses and journalists. We would do it because we are also good and kind. It is only by not looking, by turning our backs, that we can sail away and think this is sad, but it is not our sadness.”
― A.A. Gill, Lines in the Sand: Collected Journalism

“You see refugees as the problem. They aren't. They are a symptom. You see them in our fields as weeds, invasive species, but you never ask, what is a weed, but a flower in the wrong garden? That is the real problem with Lebanon, and the whole Middle East, we are all flowers in the wrong garden. You English should understand this; this is the garden you planted.”
― A.A. Gill, Lines in the Sand: Collected Journalism

“You wouldn't know it had claimed so many hopeful, thrashing, gasping lives, but that's the thing with the sea, it never looks guilty.”
― A.A. Gill, Lines in the Sand: Collected Journalism