A rule of thumb with humor; if you worry that you might be going too far, you have already not gone far enough. If everybody laughs, you have failed.

There are also people who say it's God's curse on me that I should have it near my throat because that was the organ of blasphemy which I used for so many years. I've used many other organs to blaspheme as well if it comes to that.

Allow a friend to believe in a bogus prospectus or a false promise and you cease, after a short while, to be a friend at all.

My political life has been informed by the view that if there was any truth to religion there wouldn't really be any need for politics.

I could not do what I do, and teach a class, and never miss a deadline, never be late for anything if I was a lush, OK? I would really love to read a piece that said, 'He is not a lush.' That would be fabulous, it would be a first, I could show it to people and say, 'Look!'

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.

Only the aspirants for president are fool enough to believe what they read in the newspapers.