The thing about religion is that it's the first and the worst. The worst because it's the first.

It's normally agreed that the question 'How are you?' doesn't put you on your oath to give a full or honest answer.

What is your idea of earthly happiness? To be vindicated in my own lifetime.

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

Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.

In one was, I suppose, I have been "in denial" for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely this reason, I can't see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it's all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me.

Pakistan has to export a lot of uneducated people, many of whom have become infected with the most barbaric reactionary ideas.