I became a journalist because one didn't have to specialise.

Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long.

I don't think souls or bodies can be changed by incantation. Or anything else by the way.

Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centred and even solipsistic.

Well, I'll put it this way: you can certainly say belief in God makes people behave worse. That can be proved beyond a doubt.

My dear wife has, I would say, probably never opened a religious book, and seems to be one of those people to whom the whole idea is utterly remote and absurd.

The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books.

If you look at any Muslim society and you make a scale of how developed they are, and how successful the economy is, it's a straight line. It depends on how much they emancipate their women.

People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.

For the people who ostensibly wish me well or are worried about my immortal soul, I say I take it kindly.

The penalty for getting mugged in an American city and losing your ID is that you can't fly home.

The press is still investing itself, it seems to me, in a sort of cynicism. It comes out better for them if they can predict hard times, bogging down, sniping, attrition.

I don't consider myself to be that credulous.

The people who tend to raise antiwar slogans will do so generally when it's American or British interests involved.

Chemotherapy isn't good for you.

I'm here as a product of process of evolution, which doesn't make very many exceptions. And which rates life relatively cheaply.

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.

In the movie 'Star Trek 3: The Return of Spock,' I'm a really bad Klingon, and I really enjoyed playing that - somebody who's totally unscrupulous. It's like he was not genetically equipped to feel compassion or sensitivity. Just outright evil without apology.

I don't remember that I ever really went all out to come up with a costume or a persona that could compete with everyone around me. I didn't know what to do. I found Halloween scary for just that fact - it meant that I had pressure to get up and be scary, makeup and all that. That was pretty horrifying for me.

There's something overwhelming about being in raw nature. It's got an aura about it is that is really kind of majestic and spiritual.

Uncle Fester always intrigued me. I certainly always enjoyed his kind of humor. He's just full of mischief in a kind of macabre way. I don't see anything twisted about it. It's sort of ridiculous and wacky. It's sort of fun.

One of the things I like and appreciate a lot is when somebody will come up to me and tell me how much Judge Doom terrified them as little children when he takes the shoe and puts it in the dip. They were literally scared out of their minds. I love that.

Doc Brown had a feverous imagination. He was constantly coming up with new ways and solutions to various issues, and time travel was one of them. I was just very inspired by being able to portray somebody of that sort. He's a man of tremendous energy and excitement about discovery.

I started in theatre when I was 13 or 14 years old and did a lot of theatre until my early thirties. Off-Broadway stuff - off-off-off-off-Broadway stuff - and I do love it.

I would love to do Doc again, no question. It's tough to come up with an idea that contains the excitement of the original three. So it would be a real challenge for the writers to come up with an original 'Back to the Future' story that has the same passion and intensity and excitement as the other three. But it could be done. You never know.

I get asked a lot what the key is to creating a hit show, and I have a standard answer: Do everything right, and then get lucky 10 ways.

I'm somewhat of a solitary person.

I sense from people that they get frustrated with me for not being out and about. But I guess I'm a shy boy.