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

The first thing I can remember I ever wanted was to go to the United States. And for reasons that are as conventional as you can imagine: I wanted to know if it was really true that it was the land of opportunity, of democracy, and individual liberty.

The obsession with gold, actually and politically, occurs among those who regard economics as a branch of morality. Gold is solid, gold is durable, gold is rare, gold is even (in certain very peculiar circumstances) convertible. To believe in thrift, solidity and soundness is to believe in some way in the properties of gold.

Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centred and even solipsistic.

Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation for anything important.

I've been writing a lot about a new form of Russian imperialism. Actually, Russian Orthodox imperialism. It's very little remarked that the cement, the political, ideological cement of the Russian regime now, communism having collapsed and imploded, is increasingly a confessional one.

Once you assume a creator and a plan, it makes us objects in a cruel experiment whereby we are created sick and commanded to be well.