If you think all this is going on, all these gigantic fields of gravity and light with you in mind, then you really do have a self-centredness problem.

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

If asked my opinion about virginity, I would say, "I'm opposed to it." I don't think it deserves to be celebrated, at any rate. Or at least, if I'm not opposed, I'm very highly skeptical and critical of it.

I don't even like showing my stuff to publishers and editors much.

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

[P]erhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification.

So far, I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion.