I became a journalist partly so that I wouldn't ever have to rely on the press for my information.

Islam in its origins is just as shady and approximate as those from which it took its borrowings. It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or "surrender" as a maxim to its adherents, and demands deference and respect from nonbelievers into the bargain. There is nothing-absolutely nothing-in its teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance and presumption.

In a Pyongyang restaurant, don't ever ask for a doggie bag.

Religion, it is true, still possesses the huge if cumbersome and unwieldy advantage of having come first.

A faction willing to take the risks of making war on the ossified status quo in the Middle East can be described as many things, but not as conservative.

In one was, I suppose, I have been "in denial" for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely this reason, I can't see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it's all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me.

I don't envy or much respect people who are completely politicised.