Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.

Religions sprang up among men to deal with the sometimes terrifying aspects of existence, to make sense out of the senseless, to explain things we find inexplicable.

Great critics do not explicate a text; they describe it and then report on what they have described, if the description itself is not the criticism.

My family helped start [this country], we've been in political life ... since the 1690s, and I have a very possessive sense about this country.

I believe it's my pastoral duty to convert friends to atheism.

I do not admire 'the people,' as such. No one really does. Their folk wisdom is usually false, their instincts predatory. Even their sense of survival - so highly developed in the individual - goes berserk in the mass. A crowd is a fool.

Celebrities are invariably celebrity-mad, just as liars always believe liars.