For the people who ostensibly wish me well or are worried about my immortal soul, I say I take it kindly.
I became a journalist because one didn’t have to specialise.
I do not believe any of the statistical claims that are made about public opinion. I don’t see why anybody does.
I don’t even like showing my stuff to publishers and editors much.
I don’t think consensus-building politics is what I’m meant to be doing.
I don’t think souls or bodies can be changed by incantation. Or anything else by the way.
I don’t think the war in Afghanistan was ruthlessly enough waged.
I’m terrified of losing my voice.
Not since North Korean media declared Kim Jong-il to be the reincarnation of Kim Il Sung has there been such a blatant attempt to create a necrocracy, or perhaps mausolocracy, in which a living claimant assumes the fleshly mantle of the departed.
As the cleansing ocean closes over bin Laden’s carcass, may the earth lie lightly on the countless graves of those he sentenced without compunction to be burned alive or dismembered in the street.
Nonintervention does not mean that nothing happens. It means that something else happens.
Those of us who are most genuinely repelled by war and violence are also those who are most likely to decide that some things, after all, are worth fighting for.
A melancholy lesson of advancing years is the realisation that you can’t make old friends.
The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle.
In our time, the symbol of state intrusion into the private life is the mandatory urine test.
The finest fury is the most controlled.
Cheap booze is a false economy.
What better way for a ruling class to claim and hold power than to pose as the defenders of the nation.
Forget it. Never explain; never apologize. You can either write posthumously or you can’t.
No one has the right to tell me what to do because he has a divine warrant.