What is it you most dislike? Stupidity, especially in its nastiest forms of racism and superstition.

Those of us who write and study history are accustomed to its approximations and ambiguities. This is why we do not take literally the tenth-hand reports of frightened and illiterate peasants who claim to have seen miracles or to have had encounters with messiahs and prophets and redeemers who were, like them, mere humans. And this is also why we will never submit to dictation from those who display a fanatical belief in certainty and revelation.

But you'll notice, you will notice that Russia and China, invariably at the United Nations, move to block American action, to repress or hem in or punish other kinds of outlaw. Who stands behind Mugabi at the United Nations? Russia and China do. Who tried successfully to prevent the United Nations from speaking with one voice on its most signal violation of its resolutions, Iraq? Russia and China, again. North Korea the same. Burma the same.

Millions of people die every day. Everyone's got to go sometime. I've came by this particular tumor honestly. If you smoke, which I did for many years very heavily with occasional interruption, and if you use alcohol, you make yourself a candidate for it in your sixties.

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.

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.

If you look at any Muslim society and you make a scale of how developed they are, and how successful the economy is, it's a straight line. It depends on how much they emancipate their women.