Life is a crisis - so what!

If God had been a liberal, we wouldn't have had the Ten Commandments - we'd have the Ten Suggestions.

Only the old are innocent. That is what the Victorians understood, and the Christians. Original sin is a property of the young. The old grow beyond corruption very quickly.

Culture is a way of coping with the world by defining it in detail.

The whole point of marriage is to stop you getting anywhere near real life. You think it's a great struggle with the mystery of being. It's more like being smothered in warm cocoa. There's sex, but it's not what you think. Marvellous, for the first fortnight. Then every Wednesday. If there isn't a good late-night concert on the Third. Meanwhile you become a biological functionary. An agent of the great female womb, spawning away, dumping its goods in your lap for succour. Daddy, daddy, we're here, and we're expensive.

My experience of ships is that on them one makes an interesting discovery about the world. One finds one can do without it completely.

If God had meant us to have group sex, I guess he'd have given us all more organs.