Is God a man or a woman? God could be an armadillo. I have no idea.

Bush has not read enough books to have a developed moral sense. The fewer books you read, the easier it is to become fundamental. In some ways my antiwar stand here is also a stand on anti-literacy. Someone should get G.W. into a reading program, get him to join a book club. Have him read Hamlet, King Lear.

If I were a doctor nobody would be inviting me to talk to reservations. I'd be a different person. Writers can influence more people.

Nobody recognizes that a bookstore or library can also be a drowning polar bear. And in this country [US], magazines, newspapers, and bookstores are drowning polar bears. And if people can't see that or don't want to talk about it, I don't understand them at all.

Last September 16th, I was walking in downtown Seattle when this pick-up truck pulls up in front of me. Guy leans out the window and yells, "Go back to your own country," and I was laughing so hard because it wasn't so much a hate crime as a crime of irony.

Religious fundamentalists are unaware that freedom of religion necessarily brings with it the freedom to mock religion.

It's not oil that runs the world, it's shame.