I purge compulsively. I'm constantly shedding things.

To rid the world of Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki and Moammar Qaddafi within six months: if Obama were a Republican, he'd be on Mount Rushmore by now.

Blogging is to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.

How can you tell when a political ideology has become the equivalent of a religion?

Homophobia: the fear that another man will treat you like you treat women.

Don't fool yourself that you're blogging when you're really just putting stuff up online.

The important things are not worth knowing because they are useful. They are worth knowing because they are true.

When you put a tiny and despised minority up for a popular vote, the minority usually loses.

When I was about eight, I asked my mother if it was true that God knows everything about you. When she answered yes, I said, "Then there's no hope for me, Mum."

I think of these imperial adventures like welfare programs; you start them with all good intentions, they never end, they go on forever and get more expensive as they go on.

The dirty little secret of journalism is that it really isn't a profession, it's a craft. All you need is a telephone and a conscience and you're all set.

If you stand firm in the light, you can never be diminish by the doom of darkness.

I know it's a really hard concept to process, but the fact that Govt accuses someone of being a Terrorist doesn't mean they are.

I'm trying to teach my daughter about healthy eating.

The collaboration wish list is huge, very long. It goes from people like Elton John, for whom I have an unbelievable amount of respect, to Snoop Dogg, whom I also respect a great deal.

The wind cannot shake a mountain. Neither praise nor blame moves the wise man.

You can prove anything by mentioning another computer language.

As I'm lying there at my funeral I would hope to hear somebody say, “Look, he's still moving!

I read a lot of research notes about the countries I visit, and my mum and dad bought me a Kindle, but I'm still getting to grips with it. I prefer paper books.

A race is a work of art that people can look at and be affected in as many ways they're capable of understanding.

A painter is always overjoyed when anybody pays any attention to him at all, puts him in any category, calls him anything - as long as they call him something.