Beautiful sentences pop into my head. Beautiful sentences that aren’t always absolutely accurate. Then, I have to choose between the beautiful sentence and being absolutely accurate. It can be a difficult choice.
You can only have one aim per debate.
I still make sure to go, at least once every year, to a country where things cannot be taken for granted, and where there is either too much law and order or too little.
A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I’ll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I’m crepuscular.
I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously.
I’ve had some dark nights of the soul, of course, but giving in to depression would be a sellout, a defeat.
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.
There are all kinds of stupid people that annoy me but what annoys me most is a lazy argument.
Everything about Christianity is contained in the pathetic image of ’the flock.
Terrorism is the tactic of demanding the impossible, and demanding it at gunpoint.
What word or expression do you most overuse? Re-reading a collection of my stuff, I was rather startled to find that it was ’perhaps.
The most educated person in the world now has to admit – I shall not say confess – that he or she knows less and less but at least knows less and less about more and more.
The one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition.
What is your idea of earthly happiness? To be vindicated in my own lifetime.
I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves.
My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line, and kiss my ass.
In a Pyongyang restaurant, don’t ever ask for a doggie bag.
What do you most value in your friends? Their continued existence.
I think being an atheist is something you are, not something you do.
I’m not particularly a feminist, but if you get women off the animal cycle of reproduction and give them some say in how many children they’ll have, immediately the floor will rise.