Well, I almost never agree with anything anyone in the current administration says, but I read their press releases and interviews and late-night tweets regularly, because I need to stay informed.

We should engage with these texts. I disagree with them, and I argue back against them, but I don’t think that means they shouldn’t be read and thought about.

I don’t think there is a better journalist than Hitchens writing in English. The power of his arguments – they’re so crisply written, they’re so forceful that, if you are on the other side, they almost strangle you. There’s nobody more compelling to read. Every time I read him, I learn something from him. His arguments are so tight, they’re hermetic. It’s very difficult to take them apart. I certainly don’t agree with him a lot of the time, but you can’t but be in awe of the way he can build an argument.

Even though I’m not a utilitarian, and so I tend to disagree with Singer in terms of the general framework, this book literally changed my life. I read it many years ago, in the 1990s, when I was in Knoxville, Tennessee.

I’ve a deplorable tendency to become entrenched in my own prejudices: If I dislike an artist, an art form, or an idea (jazz, ballet, certain kinds of fiction) it is extremely difficult to get me to change my mind, and all evidence presented to the contrary will be discarded and very likely mocked. Of course, nobody suffers but me.

I’m monstrously judgmental. It’s like talking to the pope.

I am so obdurate I do not change my mind.

I understand that you lose the register of hearing that enables you to hear crickets, and when I can’t hear crickets in the summer I’ll be really sad.

Every single morning the sun comes up and you get to try again.

Like it’s worth being alive.