Religion is compulsory in English schools, you know.

The people who tend to raise antiwar slogans will do so generally when it's American or British interests involved.

A lot of people, because of my contempt for the false consolations of religion, think of me as a symbolic public opponent of that in extremis. And sometimes that makes me feel a bit alarmed, to be the repository of other people's hope.

The rich world likes and wishes to believe that someone, somewhere, is doing something for the Third World. For this reason, it does not inquire too closely into the motives or practices of anyone who fulfills, however vicariously, this mandate.

Everything everyone thinks they know about [Mother Teresa] is false. It must be the single most successful emotional con job of the twentieth century.

Talking, it seemed to me, was the point of adult existence.

For me, the life of the angler is an almost flawless example of how not to have a good time.