I personally want to "do" death in the active and not the passive, and to be there to look it in the eye and be doing something when it comes for me.

Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.

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

The one unforgivable sin is to be boring.

For me, the life of the angler is an almost flawless example of how not to have a good time.

A lot of people, because of my contempt for the false consolations of religion, think of me as a symbolic public opponent of that in extremis. And sometimes that makes me feel a bit alarmed, to be the repository of other people's hope.

Human beings are pattern-seeking animals who will prefer even a bad theory or a conspiracy theory to no theory at all.