Whether talking about addiction, taxation [on cigarettes] or education [about smoking], there is always at the center of the conversation an essential conundrum: How come we're selling this deadly stuff anyway?

[I]n contrast to the common belief that they are the world's greatest cynics, the best journalists are the world's great idealists. They have experienced firsthand the great soothing balance of human existence. For every disgrace there is triumph, for every wrong there is a moment of justice, for every funeral a wedding, for every obituary a birth announcement.

Jane Austen may not be the best writer, but she certainly writes about the best people. And by that I mean people just like me.

And I don't have to listen to a sermon to know what to think or feel about them. It's almost as if I absorbed completely what mattered most to me, and the rest could go.

People who wish to salute the free and independent side of their evolutionary character acquire cats. People who wish to pay homage to their servile and salivating roots own dogs.

It is so easy to waste our lives: Our days, our hours, our minutes ... it is so easy to exist instead of live.

I've been a feminist since I was a teenager, but originally it was because I wanted to make the world a better place for me.