“When I was 14 a chaplain at school gave me a reading list. I read everything and I went back to him with a question: how can you really believe in this stuff?”

The wise say that our failure is to form habits: for habit is the mark of a stereotyped world.

Middle age has been defined as what happens when a person’s broad mind and narrow waist change places.

Religions survive mainly because they brainwash the young.

Religion and science have a common ancestor – ignorance.

Misuse of reason might yet return the world to pre-technological night; plenty of religious zealots hunger for just such a result, and are happy to use the latest technology to effect it.

Humanism is the philosophy that you should be a good guest at the dinner table of life.

I do not believe that there are any such things as gods and goddesses, for exactly the same reasons as I do not believe there are fairies, goblins or sprites, and these reasons should be obvious to anyone over the age of ten.

Look at the blogosphere – the biggest lavatory wall in the universe, a palimpsest of graffiti and execration.

It takes a certain ingenuous faith – but I have it – to believe that people who read and reflect more likely than not come to judge things with liberality and truth.

I despise people who depend on these things [heroin and cocaine]. If you really want a mind-altering experience, look at a tree.

It doesn’t have to be the Grand Canyon, it could be a city street, it could be the face of another human being – Everything is full of wonder.

If there is anything worth fearing in the world, it is living in such a way that gives one cause for regret in the end.

…mastery of the emotions is fundamental to a virtuous life.

Inculcating the various competing – competing, note – falsehoods of the major faiths into small children is a form of child abuse, and a scandal.

I am putting together a secular bible. My Genesis is when the apple falls on Newton’s head.

Just as modern motorways have no room for ox-carts or wandering pedestrians, so modern society has little place for lives and ways that are too eccentric.

For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable. While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.

I’m always afraid someone’s going to tap me on the shoulder one day and say, ‘Back to North London’.

Once that gets started, he gets backed by so much cash and so much power that he becomes a monstrous invader from outer space.

Eternally noble, historically fair; Who, when you win, will always give your back a pat. Why can’t a woman be like that?

While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.

They came back to the nest in the middle of April. They take separate vacations in the winter – the mother and father.

I’m shy and can’t for the life of me barge around and slap people on the back.

You make one good shot and it brings you back the next time. With writing a long book there has to be at least one bit that has some magic in it that you can go back to.