Who are your favourite heroines in real life? The women of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who risk their lives and their beauty to defy the foulness of theocracy. Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi as their ideal feminine model.

The great thing about the United States and the historically magnetic effect it has had on a lot of people like me is its generosity, to put it simply.

A celebrity is well known for being well known. I'm relatively well known - but for what I've written and said, or so I fondly imagine.

Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.

She's got no charisma of any kind [but] I can imagine her being mildly useful to a low-rank porn director.

One can't live without fear, it's a question of what is your attitude towards fear? I'm afraid of a sordid death. I'm afraid that I will die in an ugly or squalid way, and cancer can be very vigorous in that respect.

Name a moral statement or action, uttered or performed by a religious person that could not have been uttered or performed by an unbeliever.