Sparks: Ukraine's attack on Saint Petersburg 'brings war back to Russia'

The tyrant who builds his reign on storms at sea should not be surprised when the waves finally reach his own harbor.

The form requesting approval to bomb a city arrives back on my desk, stamped with the very seal of the city it just destroyed.

Declaring one city sacred and another profane becomes impossible once you understand that fire burns the same in every world.

Why do a million hands lift the stone that will crush their own homes?

He writes of justice in his study, while the smell of smoke from the northern suburbs settles on the untouched samovar.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely, but the corruption spreads until the architecture of the state itself collapses under its own weight.

You cannot plant the flag of empire in foreign soil and then weep when the wind carries its seeds back to your own garden.

Study the arc of the flung stone and you will know the exact parabola of its return.

Hateful things: the elegant symmetry of a bridge you built for conquest, now trembling under the footsteps of your own retreat.

In Damascus they pray for rain; in the northern capital they now pray against the same eastern wind that once brought only merchants.

Having crossed continents on a mule to observe distant conflicts, I now note the same look of bewildered loss on faces much closer to home.

Before you knock down the fence between your neighbor's land and yours, understand why every civilization until yours thought to build it.