It's difficult enough for a young person to put his soul on the line in front of a lot of drunken people without having that hanging over his head, too.

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight?

Environmentalists changed the word jungle to rain forest, because no one would give them money to save a jungle. Same with swamps and wetlands.

I think everybody should be able to do anything they want and let roving bands of people punish each other for things they don't agree with. People with no underwear doing anything they want. Wouldn't that be fun? You wouldn't need television.

Primitive societies, or social groupings, had shamans, and some of them even more recent in time. Shamans were tricksters. There was a tradition of the trickster, and the trickster was a clown, a humorous fellow. His task was to trick the gods, to humor the gods into laughing, so that there was access to the divine - because laughter is a moment when we are completely ourselves.

Have you ever noticed that the lawyer always smiles more than the client?

I profess no belief in God, which by definition is true, especially if we take the accepted definition of God. But to be an atheist is to also have a belief, and have a system, and I don't know that I like that either.