There is no such thing as closure, and it wouldn't be worth having if it were available, because all it would mean is that something that was quite an important part of you had gone numb.

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and - since there is no other metaphor - also the soul.

I had real plans for my next decade and felt I'd worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read - if not indeed write - the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger?

I do not believe any of the statistical claims that are made about public opinion. I don't see why anybody does.

No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.

I am absolutely convinced that religion is the main source of hatred in this world.

Atheists have always argued that this world is all that we have, and that our duty is to one another to make the very most and best of it.