Like the experience of warfare, the endurance of grave or terminal illness involves long periods of tedium and anxiety, punctuated by briefer interludes of stark terror and pain.
Yes, I, well, when I write, as often as I can, I try to write as if I'm talking to people. It doesn't always work, and one shouldn't always try it, but I try and write as if I am talking, and trying to engage the reader in conversation.
I took part in what was actually the last eruption of Marxist internationalism.
Well, to the people who pray for me to not only have an agonising death, but then be reborn to have an agonising and horrible eternal life of torture, I say, 'Well, good on you. See you there.'
'WASP' is the only ethnic term that is in fact a term of class, apart from redneck, which is another word for the same group but who are in the lower social strata, so it's inexplicably tied up with social standing and culture and history in a way that the other hyphenations just are not.
Henry Kissinger should have the door shut in his face by every decent person and should be shamed, ostracized and excluded.
A faction willing to take the risks of making war on the ossified status quo in the Middle East can be described as many things, but not as conservative.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn't write? But that fortunately hasn't proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.
The great thing about the United States and the historically magnetic effect it has had on a lot of people like me is its generosity, to put it simply.
The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It's a battle you can't hope to win - it's a battle that's going to go on forever. It's part of the human condition.
One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That's how the human species has done as well as it has.
The penalty for getting mugged in an American city and losing your ID is that you can't fly home.
For the people who ostensibly wish me well or are worried about my immortal soul, I say I take it kindly.
To terrify children with the image of hell... to consider women an inferior creation. Is that good for the world?
Ordinary morality is innate in my view.
My children, to the extent that they have found religion, have found it from me, in that I insist on at least a modicum of religious education for them.
The Islamists will try to spoil everything for everyone.
I don't have any terrific self-esteem issues but I do sometimes realise I've been too lucky and that I'm over-praised. It makes me nervous. I have this sense of being overrated.
I joined a small but growing post-Trotskyite Luxembourgist sect.
