I make preparations both to live and to die every day, but with the emphasis on not dying, and on acting as if I was going to carry on living.

The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy - the one that's absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and - since there is no other metaphor - also the soul.

It's impossible, I think, however much I'd become disillusioned politically or evolve into a post-political person, I don't think I'd ever change my view that socialism is the best political moment humans have ever come up with.

If we have free will, by definition we cannot be granted it. We can't be given it. My [-audio-recording-distorted-] paradox states that 'Of course we have free will, we have no choice.' To say that it's a gift is to negate the whole concept of free will on its face. So, if that isn't self-evident, I can't think of anything that would meet the definition of being self-evident.

I love it when Muslims go to war with each other, as I do when the Christians do, because it shows there's no such thing as the Christian world and the Islamic world. That's all crap.

I think everybody has had the experience at some point when they feel that there's more to life than just matter. But I think it's very important to keep that under control and not to hand it over to be exploited by priests and shamans and rabbis and other riffraff.