What if I pulled through and the pious faction contentedly claimed that their prayers had been answered? That would somehow be irritating.

By trying to adjust to the findings that it once tried so viciously to ban and repress, religion has only succeeded in restating the same questions that undermined it in earlier epochs. What kind of designer or creator is so wasteful and capricious and approximate? What kind of designer or creator is so cruel and indifferent? And - most of all - what kind of designer or creator only chooses to "reveal" himself to semi-stupefied peasants in desert regions?

I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously.

I vote and I do jury duty.

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

I say 'Merry Christmas' to people I don't know, or to people I know are Christians. I say 'Happy Hanukkah' to people I know to be or suspect to be Jewish. And I don't say 'Happy Kwanzaa,' because I think African Americans get enough insults all year round.

The essence of tyranny is not iron law. It is capricious law.