In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.

I don't think souls or bodies can be changed by incantation. Or anything else by the way.

The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.

If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in a quite different world.

The suicide-bombing community is not absolutely 100 percent religious, but it is pretty nearly 100 percent religious.

Religion is not the belief there is a god. Religion is the belief god tells you what to do.

I'm afraid the SS's relationship with the Catholic Church is something the Church still has to deal with and does not deny.