I am of course a skeptic about the divinity of Christ and a scorner of the notion that there is a God who cares how we are or what we do.

The name of the new religion," said Rumfoord, "is The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent.

I wasn't aware of Ku Klux Klan as I was aware of the widespread assumption that African-Americans were dumber than white people. I think my father believed that. I think everybody white did.

Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on.

The heartbreaking necessity of lying about reality and the heartbreaking impossibilty of lying about it

And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like "Poo-tee-weet?

In the middle of Siberia I guess there's a lake that big [ like the Great Lakes], but there are practically no other lakes that big with fresh water.