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

Europeans think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they've taken as their own, as their representative American someone who actually embodies all of those qualities.

The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy - the one that's absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.

All the time, I've felt that life is a wager and that I probably was getting more out of leading a bohemian existence as a writer than I would have if I didn't.

History is a tragegy, not a morality tale.

If you think all this is going on, all these gigantic fields of gravity and light with you in mind, then you really do have a self-centredness problem.

To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist.