I find it extraordinary that a straightforward if inelegant device for ensuring the survival of the species should involve human beings in such emotional turmoil. Does sex have to be taken so seriously?

It is surely unreasonable to credit that only one small star in the immensity of the universe is capable of developing and supporting intelligent life. But we shall not get to them and they will not come to us.

We are often more merciful to our animals than we are to each other.

Death ... obliterates family resemblance as it does personality: there is no affinity between the living and the dead.

People were excited by violence. What, after all, was the sexual act but a voluntarily endured assault, a momentary death?

Work did bestow dignity, status, meaning. Wasn't that why people dreaded unemployment, why some men found retirement so traumatic?

Every island to a child is a treasure island.