Religion is compulsory in English schools, you know.

It's true that obscenity is a matter of taste and in the eye of the beholder.

Obscenity comes from grime.

The secular argument, or the liberal argument, is to as much as possible remove taboos so things do not become unmentionable; to let some air into the discussion.

I don't think Romney is wacky at all, but religion makes intelligent people say and do wacky things, believe and affirm crazy things. Left on his own, Romney would never have said something like the Garden Of Eden was in Missouri, and will be again.

To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist.

I became a journalist partly so that I wouldn't ever have to rely on the press for my information.

George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism.

The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It's a battle you can't hope to win - it's a battle that's going to go on forever. It's part of the human condition.

The great thing about the United States and the historically magnetic effect it has had on a lot of people like me is its generosity, to put it simply.

I make preparations both to live and to die every day, but with the emphasis on not dying, and on acting as if I was going to carry on living.

I think I write in a fairly self-confident manner.

I feel Anglo-American.

I don't think consensus-building politics is what I'm meant to be doing.

In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.

You can be a Polish American, or an Arab American, or a Greek American but you can't be English American. Why not?

I don't envy or much respect people who are completely politicised.

I don't even like showing my stuff to publishers and editors much.

I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death.

Only the aspirants for president are fool enough to believe what they read in the newspapers.

The citizens of Tumortown are forever assailed with cures and rumors of cures.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting 'O.K.' has deposed the more affirmative 'Yes,' so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of 'like' are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

A speech idiosyncrasy, in the same way as an air quote, is really justifiable only if it's employed very sparingly and if the user consciously intends to be using it.