I have quite a decent constitution in spite of all my abuse of it and my advanced years. I'm still quite robust.

My children, to the extent that they have found religion, have found it from me, in that I insist on at least a modicum of religious education for them.

I retain what's interesting to me, but I don't have a lot of strategic depth.

I appear as a skeptic, who believes that doubt is the great engine, the great fuel of all inquiry, all discovery and all innovation.

Suppose there were groups of secularists at hospitals who went round the terminally ill and urged them to adopt atheism: 'Don't be a mug all your life. Make your last days the best ones. People might suppose this was in poor taste.

Many more people are poor and sick because of the life of MT: Even more will be poor and sick if her example is followed. She was a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud, and a church that officially protects those who violate the innocent has given us another clear sign of where it truly stands on moral and ethical questions.

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.