...the current Human Rights Commission's working group is made up of the Netherlands, Hungary, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Zimbabwe. No, I'm not making that up.

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.

What are you prepared to give for your dream? If it is not everything...stop pipe dreaming.

I shall try to write a poem that is about the moment but doesn't betray things that are true to me as a poet.

The word spinster tells you everything that you need to know about our attitude of women who choose not to marry, yes.

The more you build your life on principle and less on personality - yours or others - the straighter will be your course.

I am attracted to characters who think they are in control, but their situation is uncontrollable.

A lot of the touring stuff has become a drag. Traveling itself is a drag. Anyone who's been to an airport knows that.

I finally found out how priests get holy water. They boil the hell out of it.

I do have this reputation for being a serious person.

The body is one integrated system, not a collection of organs divided up by medical specialties. The medicine of the future connects everything.

I am luminous with age.