If people I've never met or don't know say that what I've written or done or said means anything to them, then I'm happy to take it at face value, for once. It cheers me up.

No moral person would do such a thing unless they thought it was divinely warranted.

There is almost no country in Africa where it is not essential to know to which tribe, or which subgroup of which tribe, the president belongs. From this single piece of information you can trace the lines of patronage and allegiance that define the state.

Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.

People who think with their epidermis or their genitalia or their clan are the problem to begin with. One does not banish this specter by invoking it. If I would not vote against someone on the grounds of 'race' or 'gender' alone, then by the exact same token I would not cast a vote in his or her favor for the identical reason. Yet see how this obvious question makes fairly intelligent people say the most alarmingly stupid things.

It's true that obscenity is a matter of taste and in the eye of the beholder.

North Korea is a necrocracy, or a mauselocracy or a thanatocracy in which the one [Kim Il-sung] is diffused into being with the other [Kim Jong Il], and where both of them are said to have had miraculous births attended by miraculous phenomena such as, for example, birds singing in Korean, when they were born.