Christopher Quotes

Ordinary morality is innate in my view.

I'm here as a product of process of evolution, which doesn't make very many exceptions. And which rates life relatively cheaply.

The great thing about the United States and the historically magnetic effect it has had on a lot of people like me is its generosity, to put it simply.

As I've said before, you can be an atheist and anything you like.

It's much worse to see a woman drunk than a man: I don't know quite why this is true but it just is. Don't ever be responsible for it.

Cluster bombs are perhaps not good in themselves, but when they are dropped on identifiable concentrations of Taliban troops, they do have a heartening effect.

When you fall ill, people send you CDs. Very often, in my experience, these are by Leonard Cohen

If waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.

Hero­ism breaks its heart, and ide­al­ism its back, on the intran­si­gence of the cred­u­lous and the mediocre, manip­u­lated by the cyn­i­cal and the corrupt.

Don't swallow your moral code in tablet form.

In the brute physical world, and the one encompassed by medicine, there are all too many things that could kill you, don't kill you, and then leave you considerably weaker.

I'm terrified of losing my voice.

As the cleansing ocean closes over bin Laden's carcass, may the earth lie lightly on the countless graves of those he sentenced without compunction to be burned alive or dismembered in the street.

Nonintervention does not mean that nothing happens. It means that something else happens.

Everything everyone thinks they know about [Mother Teresa] is false. It must be the single most successful emotional con job of the twentieth century.

There either is a god or there is not; there is a 'design' or not.

I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: 'If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.' Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.

I'm not very impressed by people who yell "traitor" and "communist" and other less printable things. I don't like it.

I'd like to prove to other people that it's not the end of everything to be diagnosed with cancer.

A celebrity is well known for being well known. I'm relatively well known - but for what I've written and said, or so I fondly imagine.

A minority is only thought of as a minority when it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority, real or imaginary. And no threat is ever quite imaginary.

No one ever hates without a cause.

Every writer has certain subjects that they write about again and again, and . . . most people's books are just variations on certain themes.

George smiles to himself, with entire self-satisfaction. Yes, I am crazy, he thinks. That is my secret; my strength.

I must honor those who fight of their own free will, he said to himself. And I must try to imitate their courage by following my path as a pacifist, wherever it takes me.

I'm very militant, you know, in a quite way.

In order to get the worst possible first impression of Los Angeles one should arrive there by bus, preferably in summer and on a Saturday night.

The Quito telephone service is about as reliable as roulette.

What it sees there isn't so much a face as the expression of a predicament.

You see, Kenny, there are some things you don't even know you know, until you're asked.

Lois and Alexander are by far the most beautiful creatures in the class; their beauty is like the beauty of plants, seemingly untroubled by vanity, anxiety or effort.

We may legitimately see in the [Old Testament] event, or in the record of it, additional levels of significance in the light of the end of the story – i.e. in the light of Christ

Technology, publicity and sexuality have their place in music, but they are all subordinate to the pleasures and power of true vocal talent.

You have to realize what you don't know before you can learn about it.

If life was a piece of cake, it wouldn't be worth eating!

The saying "the cherry on top" is only a good metaphor if the person listening or reading actually likes cherries on top of their ice cream.

Do not kick people when they are down because you will surely fall right beside them.

In order to maintain a friendship, do not avoid confrontation, but rather, embrace it.

I'm a father of four so whenever I'm not working my kids have their different sports, or plays, or school performances, so I don't do a whole lot of other stuff besides being a dad.

[Flürscheim] was good at unanswerable arguments.

Digital has really achieved a certain image quality for capture. There's also the way we view and exhibit films. It really touches all aspects of cinema.

There’s something about pleasure I find annoying.

I've fallen for one girl too many who's wanted some variation of who I am and only that. It eats you alive.

Now I don't want to feel cornered as an actor, because I've got a wider range than that.

My main place is in Switzerland, but I live on a plane, really.

Adherents of the new religious right reject the separation of politics and religion, but they bring no spiritual insights to politics.

We are all revolutionaries now, addicts of change.

Uprootedness uproots everything except the need for roots.

The left has lost the common touch.

It's not about winning. It's the enjoyment of doing it - it gets your brain going.