I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say that one is an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or agnostic. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect that he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.

To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

Tens of millions of Americans who neither know or understand the actual arguments for, or even against, evolution, march in the Army of the Night with their Bibles held high

Every religion seems like a fantasy to outsiders, but as holy truth to those of the faith.

You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.