“The recipe for great work is: very exacting taste, plus the ability to gratify it.”

“There are few sources of energy so powerful as a procrastinating college student.”

“People who write about politics, whether on the left or the right, have a consistent bias: they take politics seriously.”

“Its hard to do a really good job on anything you dont think about in the shower.”

“If you leave a bunch of eleven-year-olds to their own devices, what you get is Lord of the Flies. Like a lot of American kids, I read this book in school. Presumably it was not a coincidence. Presu...”

“At every period of history, people have believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you risked ostracism or even violence by saying otherwise. If our own time were...”

“I am a person before I am anything else. I never say I am a writer. I never say I am an artist...I am a person who does those things.”

“The point, I decided, wasn't to have the autobiography or even the memories. The point was who I became when I wrote.”

“The willingness to reach inside every part of yourself opens the door to total understanding. You place your entire identity on the line, not just an isolated part. This may sound daunting, but act...”

“Well, pray if you like, only you'd do better to use your judgment.”

“...reason rationalizes reality for him (Dr. Nathan) as it does for the rest of us, in the Freudian sense of providing a more palatable or convenient explanation, and there are so many subjects abou...”

“Writing my own novels in the '90s...I never imagined that in ten years, science and rationality would require explanation and defense in a world rocked and ruled by religious fervor. ”

“Does God get what God wants?Thats a good question. An interesting question. And its an important question that has given us much to discuss. But theres a better question. One that we actually can a...”

“Nobody fights over the opinion of which book is better. So why do we fight over which religion is better, if they're all based on books? Let us read and learn from them all and unite in our differe...”

“How many races have been dehumanized in the name of evolution and scientific race theories? Is a bomb a religious or a scientific invention?”