Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.

We wanted to test each other's capacity for survival: only if we had tried in vain to destroy one another would we know we were safe.

There are people who say, 'Oh this guy is quite thick.' I think the reason is that, increasingly, I don't mind being simple in terms of literary expression. Others say, 'No, no, no. He went to Cambridge. He got a good degree. He must be Einstein.'

I feel that the great challenge of our time is the communication of ideas.

Only as we mature does affection begin to depend on achievement.

It's as though either you accept [religious] doctrine and then you can have all the nice stuff, or you reject the doctrine and you're living in some kind of spiritual wasteland under the guidance of CNN and Walmart.

So many complaints boil down to the belly ache of the fragile, mortal, ignored ego in a vast and indifferent universe.