I don't say things like "the grace of God." All that's white noise to me, not because I'm an intellectual. For many people, it's gibberish. Likewise, the idea that the Koran was dictated by an archaic illiterate is a fantasy.

Ordinary morality is innate in my view.

Ever since I discovered that my god given male member was going to give me no peace, I decided to give it no rest in return.

What happens to the faith healer and the shaman when any poor citizen can see the full effect of drugs or surgeries, administered without ceremonies or mystifications? Roughly the same thing as happens to the rainmaker when the climatologist turns up, or to the diviner from the heavens when schoolteachers get hold of elementary telescopes.

It's surprising to me how many of my friends send Christmas cards, or holiday cards, including my atheist and secular friends.

I personally want to "do" death in the active and not the passive, and to be there to look it in the eye and be doing something when it comes for me.

It [defending Salmon Rushdie] was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual and the defense of free expression.