The flies were teaching an advanced seminar in philosophy as they crawled up the crack of my ass

The only thing he likes better than a nice juicy homicide is a sirloin steak smothered with onions.

In Watermelon Sugar deeds were done

The old drunk told me about trout fishing. When he could talk, he had a way of describing trout as if they were a precious and intelligent metal.

USED TROUT STREAM FOR SALE. MUST BE SEEN TO BE APPRECIATED.

Thousands of graveyards were parked in rows like cars.

He looked as if he'd got a lot of pleasure out of going ten rounds with your grandmother and making sure she went the whole distance.

When he said this, it was not a form of criticism. It was just a simple observation that led to another bite from the movie on his plate called The Old Man and the Stew.

There wasn't a single thing in there that reminded me of my existence.

One spring afternoon as a child in the strange town of Portland, I walked down to a different street corner, and saw a row of old houses, huddled together like seals on a rock.

I guess some people lived like Reader's Digest, but I hadn't met any and at that time it seemed doubtful that I ever would

Moonlight drifts from over A hundred thousand miles To fall upon a cemetery It reads a hundred epitaphs And then smiles at a nest of Baby owls

By the way, Doc Edwards said. How's that book coming along? Oh, it's coming along. Fine. What's it about? Just what I'm writing down: one word after another. Good.

THE NECESSITY OF APPEARING IN YOUR OWN FACE There are days when that is the last place in the world that you want to be but you have to be there, like a movie, because it -----features you.

Punitive ghosts like steam-driven tennis courts haunt the apples in my nonexistent orchard. I remember when there were just worms out there and they danced in moonlit cores on warm September nights.

I always wanted to write a book that ended with the word Mayonnaise.

It's pretty hard to have faith when everybody is trying to lock you up.

Now it was close to sunset and the earth was beginning to cool off in the manner of eternity and office girls were returning like penguins from Montgomery Street.

Let us pretend that my mind is a taxi... and suddenly you are riding in it.

You're not fooling anyone by taking your clothes off when you go to bed.

I read the note and it did not please me and I threw it away, so not even time could find it.

Her hand had a lot of strength gained through the process of gentleness.

Something about the cultural tradition of Jews is way, way more sympathetic to science and learning and intellectual pursuits than Islam.

If saying that religion should be a private matter and should not have special influence in public life is illiberal, then 74% of U.K. Christians are illiberal, too.

Placebos work.

I'm not much given to straight, irony-free hero-worship.

In Britain, you don't usually learn about evolution until you are about 15. I should have thought that you should start at about 8. But I could be wrong about that.

I can handle heckling on evolution because it's my own field.

In the World Wars, people were perfectly able to shoot other people just because they belonged to the wrong country, without ever asking what their opinions were. Faith too is like that.

Teachers who help to open young minds perform a duty which is as near sacred as I will admit.

I think a fundamentalist is somebody who believes something unshakably and isn't going to change their mind.

I don't actually think 'The Selfish Gene' is a very good title. I think that's one of my worst titles.

The state of Israel seems to owe its very existence to the American Jewish vote, while at the same time consigning the non-religious to political oblivion.

I can remember at the age of about six being fascinated by the planets and learning all about Mars and Venus and things.

When brains get sufficiently big, presumably, as human brains have, consciousness seems to emerge.

Science, as opposed to technology, does violence to common sense.

The feminists taught us about consciousness-raising.

Either Jesus had a father, or he didn't. The question is a scientific one, and scientific evidence, if any were available, would be used to settle it.

I'm afraid the Internet is filled with people using really very intemperate language.

Darwin gives courage to the rest of science that we shall end up understanding literally everything, springing from almost nothing - a thought extremely hard to comprehend and believe.

I don't think that it's up to government to dictate what people should wear.

A native speaker of English who has never read a word of the King James Bible is verging on the barbarian.

I'm not a good observer. I'm not proud of it.

Of course you can use the products of science to do bad things, but you can use them to do good things, too.

Science coverage could be improved by the recognition that science is timeless, and therefore science stories should not need to be pegged to an item in the news.

It's an important point to realize that the genetic programming of our lives is not fully deterministic. It is statistical - it is in any animal merely statistical - not deterministic.

I once wrote that anybody who believes the world is only 6,000 years old is either ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked.

Christopher Hitchens was a writer and an orator with a matchless style, commanding a vocabulary and a range of literary and historical allusion far wider than anybody I know.

Don't feel embarrassed if you've never heard of William Lane Craig. He parades himself as a philosopher, but none of the professors of philosophy whom I consulted had heard his name, either.

It doesn't hurt my feeling when I get vilified by fundamentalist religious people. I've actually made comedy out of it. I've made light of that.