Sparks: Zelensky proposes face-to-face talks in open letter to Putin

The hardest stone is worn down not by the chisel but by the water that flows around it.

What do we mean by 'direct engagement,' and does the man who proposes it understand the nature of the man he would engage?

When a people's right to self-determination is violated, the appeal to their violator constitutes a melancholy testament to that violation.

The formal equality of a meeting table belies the vast inequality of power that makes the gesture an act of desperation, not diplomacy.

This proposed operation, while logical in sequence, cannot compute the variable of a partner who operates on a wholly different calculus.

Before analyzing the proposal, one must first record the atmospheric conditions of its delivery and the instrument of its reception.

One cannot chart this political isotherm without also measuring the economic pressures and historical frost lines that created it.

This green shoot of dialogue struggles for light beneath the dark canopy of pride, which chokes all that would grow.

To understand the true function of this negotiation, one must be inside the room, not reading the press release outside.

How pitiful, the elegantly penned letter that arrives after the garden has already been trampled by soldiers.

A man who has never honored his word now gets another letter asking for his honor.

Appealing to the moral sense of a power that has none is the deepest form of flattery that power can receive.

A modest proposal: that the nation which devours its neighbor should now sit down to discuss the menu.