Shepherds don't look after sheep because they love them - although I do think some shepherds like their sheep too much. They look after their sheep so they can, first, fleece them and second, turn them into meat. That's much more like the priesthood as I know it.

Nonintervention does not mean that nothing happens. It means that something else happens.

I have no time to waste on this planet being told what to do by those who think that God has given them instructions.

Those who want to be offended don't have the right to try and close down the newspaper that offends them.

Not since North Korean media declared Kim Jong-il to be the reincarnation of Kim Il Sung has there been such a blatant attempt to create a necrocracy, or perhaps mausolocracy, in which a living claimant assumes the fleshly mantle of the departed.

When you fall ill, people send you CDs. Very often, in my experience, these are by Leonard Cohen

There are days when I miss my old convictions as if they were an amputated limb. But in general I feel better, and no less radical, and you will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking.