It ought to be an offense to be excruciating and unfunny in circumstances where your audience is almost morally obliged to enthuse.

Religion gets its morality from us. We don't get our morality from religion.

America was not interventionist enough, which, of course, did mean a bit of a breach with old comrades on the left. I felt the international left in the countries concerned took the same position as I did. So, in my view, it's the left that's become reactionary and isolationist and parochial.

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.

Its a matter of principle. If Jews born in Brooklyn have a right to a state in Palestine then Palestinians born in Jerusalem have a right to a state in Palestine.

I learned that to be amusing was not to be frivolous and that language - always the language - was the magic key as much to prose as to poetry.

Most of the utopian community ideas actually are religious. They're based more on the idea of the monastery than the commune.