Blanche is written with a terrible authority, the authority that comes from artistic necessity when the writer is compelled to write by his demon, rather than by his agent or promoter.

It is one of the ironies of biographical art that some details are more relevant than others, and many details have no relevance at all.

Disgrace is a subtle, multi-layered story, as much concerned with politics as it is with the itch of male flesh. Coetzee's prose is chaste and lyrical without being self- conscious: it is a relief to encounter writing as quietly stylish as this. I was not totally convinced by Lurie's musical abilities, with regard to his proposed opera, but that is my sole complaint.

The problem was there was a small area to launch boats and we didn't have the assets there to support the task forces and deploy them. And it would've overloaded the system, which compounded the problem,

We followed every standard protocol for hurricanes, but the flooding was just astronomical. Twenty to 50 percent of the population (of New Orleans) had not evacuated. That's going to take a while to ramp up the rescue operations and support operations. It just doesn't happen in the blink of an eye.

I'm shocked at the low turnout. I thought we had people in this city that needed jobs.

I thought, 'How long can they survive in there?'

If these standards are tightened, there will be more cities around the country that will be using this more expensive reformulated gasoline. Also, it may require the reformulation of diesel also,