Look at history. It's not the account of a species at peace.

The rate of change is global now. I think there's a kind of mind that is so ill at ease with that transformation that it reaches out for something permanent. And religious faith offers that, from simplicities, which you are told are eternal and unchanging, and you can hold on to those like a life raft in a metamorphosing world.

We were language's magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny.

He would dream of discovering a magic optometrist from whom he would purchase a pair of green-tinged spectacles which would correct his regrettable myopia, and after that he would be able to see through the dense, blinding air to the fabulous world beneath.

Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.

It seems that the right of freedom of speech that was enshrined in numerous constitutions is now under attack by religious institutions.

The Chinese are good at repression and can be pretty ruthless about it.