You've got to have a sense of different audiences. I'm a kind of performer manque - I come from a long line of failed actors!

The humanities should constitute the core of any university worth the name.

I value my Catholic background very much. It taught me not to be afraid of rigorous thought, for one thing.

All propaganda or popularization involves a putting of the complex into the simple, but such a move is instantly deconstructive. For if the complex can be put into the simple, then it cannot be as complex as it seemed in the first place; and if the simple can be an adequate medium of such complexity, then it cannot after all be as simple as all that.

Genuine equality means not treating everyone the same, but attending equally to everyone’s different needs.

Works of art cannot save us. They can simply render us more sensitive to what needs to be repaired.

I liked early Amis a lot, but I stopped reading him some time ago. I admire Hitchens on literary topics - I think he is very astute. McEwan, I read a bit. But I suppose it's more the ideological phenomenon that they represent together that interests me.