The thing that defines a species is that all members have the same addressing system for their DNA.

Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts which simply do not make evolutionary sense.

Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you.

Faith is belief without evidence and reason; coincidentally that's also the definition of delusion.

Evolution is just a theory? Well, so is gravity and I don't see you jumping out of buildings.

Such delusions of grandeur to think that a God with a hundred billion galaxies on his mind would give a tuppenny damn who you sleep with, or indeed whether you believe in him.

The less you think, the more you believe.

How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one.

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.

Science is the poetry of reality.

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity.

Jimmy Boom Semtex says Semtex goes BOOM! Handle his books with care.

A writer should show the silver in his hands neither as bronze nor as gold

As a Humanist, I love science. I hate superstition, which could never have given us A-bombs.

I'm a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don't agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.

As a former federal prosecutor, I welcome the opportunity to hold Hillary Rodham Clinton accountable for her performance and her character.

When I was younger, the people making the sacrifice were my parents. It's not a cheap sport. Luckily, I had parents who made a lot of life sacrifices so I could continue in gymnastics.

Surviving and believing in tomorrow is just a habit I can't break.

Not all novelists are power-hungry madman. Some are power-hungry madwomen.

They say everybody gets 15 minutes. I hope I'm just inside the first minute and the next 14 go really slow.

Music is a bird's answer to the noise and heaviness of words. It puts the mind in a state of exhilarated speechlessness.