Children like being a little scared, but they don't want to be disturbed.

A book is a product of a pact with the Devil that inverts the Faustian contract, he'd told Allie. Dr Faustus sacrificed eternity in return for two dozen years of power; the writer agrees to the ruination of his life, and gains (but only if he's lucky) maybe not eternity, but posterity, at least. Either way (this was Jumpy's point) it's the Devil who wins.

The miniatures of the Mughal period are really the pinnacle of Indian artistic achievement. And not a single one of those paintings is done by an individual artist.

If terrorism is to be defeated, the world of Islam must take on board the secularist-humanist principles on which the modern is based, and without which their countries' freedom will remain a distant dream.

Something was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet...Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in God.

Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms.

It matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish; that to do otherwise is to legitimize it.