By working and living in New York, you are breathing Western civilization, continuously reminded of its benefits and its values.

A culture that gave the world the spiritual creations of the Classical Music of Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner and Schubert, the paintings of Michelangelo, and Raphael, Da Vinci and Rembrandt, does not need lessons from societies whose idea of spirituality is a heaven peopled with female virgins for the use of men, whose idea of heaven resembles a cosmic brothel.

The implausible, well-nigh-miraculous functioning anarchy that we know as New York is adorned with every excellence of Western art. It is a city of manifold suggestions, which ministers to every ambition, engenders a thousand talents, nurtures ingenuity and experimentation.

You can't grow up without taking a few knocks on the way. All parents know that, but children when they're growing up, they take some knocks, and nasty knocks sometimes if they've been too protected.

I have always felt that many Christians, deeply sincere Christians, support the idea of separation of State and Church and the secularist in that sense as well. They believe that religion should be very much a private affair and should not be given special treatment. The State should not fund churches for example.

We cannot hope to win the ideological battle against Islam without criticism of Islam, it is essential that we continue to criticize Islam.

All religions are sick men's dreams, false - demonstrably false - and pernicious.