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“Now, how do the young prepare to meet the old? The same way the old prepare to meet the young: with a little condescension; with low expectation of the other’s rationality; with the knowledge that the other will find what they say hard to understand, that it will go beyond them (not so much over the head as between the legs); and with the feeling that they must arrive with something the other will like, something suitable.”

“Now how does all this relate to Islamic jihad? Islam sees violence as a means of propagating the Muslim faith. Islam divides the world into two camps: the dar al-Islam (House of Submission) and the dar al-harb (House of War). The former are those lands which have been brought into submission to Islam; the latter are those nations which have not yet been brought into submission. This is how Islam actually views the world! By contrast, the conquest of Canaan represented God’s just judgement upon those peoples. The purpose was not at all to get them to convert to Judaism! War was not being used as an instrument of propagating the Jewish faith. Moreover, the slaughter of the Canaanites represented an unusual historical circumstance, not a regular means of behavior. The problem with Islam, then, is not that it has got the wrong moral theory; it’s that it has got the wrong God. If the Muslim thinks that our moral duties are constituted by God’s commands, then I agree with him. But Muslims and Christians differ radically over God’s nature. Muslims believe that God loves only Muslims. Allah has no love for unbelievers and sinners. Therefore, they can be killed indiscriminately. Moreover, in Islam God’s omnipotence trumps everything, even His own nature. He is therefore utterly arbitrary in His dealing with mankind.”

“Now however, we have contraception and it's mostly reliable so you can have sex without that happening. So then you start vilifying the act of sex itself. I don't think Buddhism has ever done that necessarily, or at least I'm not aware of Buddhism taking the stance that Christianity often has which says that sex itself is a kind of evil act, which is a really weird idea.”

“Now I also want to say, without a doubt, there are some wonderful, wonderful, absolutely wonderful things about being a man. But at the same time, there's some stuff that's just straight up twisted, and we really need to begin to challenge, look at it and really get in the process of deconstructing, redefining, what we come to know as manhood.”

“Now I am . . . like anyone with a strong preference for the fly rod, totally indifferent to how large a fish I catch by comparison with other fishermen. So when a fifteen-year-old called Fred, fishing deep in midsummer with a hideous plastic worm, caught a four and a half pounder . . . I naturally felt no resentment beyond wanting to break the kid's thumbs.”

“Now I am a close friend of poodle dogs, having had a lot of them in my time, twenty-five in all, to be exact, I have never known, or even heard of, a bad poodle, Theirs is the most charming of species, including the human, and they happily lack Man’s aggression, irritability, quick temper, and wild aim. They have courage, too, and they fight well and fairly when they have to fight. The poodle, moving into battle, lowers its head, attacks swiftly, and finishes the business without idle rhetoric or false innuendo. One spring my French poodle, who was nine years old at the time, killed three red squirrels in ten seconds, thus saving the lives of hundreds of songbirds, the natural prey of the red marauders. She has never attacked a gray squirrel or a friendly dog, and while she has admittedly engaged in a cold war with cats since 1942, she is too gentle, and too smart, to try to take one apart to find out what makes it purr.”

“Now I am in the garden at the back . . . a very preserve of butterflies as I remember it, with a high fence, and a gate . . . where the fruit clusters on the trees, riper and richer than fruit has ever been since, in any other garden, and where my mother gathers some in a basket while I stand by, bolting furtive gooseberries, and trying to look unnerved.”

“Now I am in the place I call this wide wide Heaven because it includes all my simplest desires but also the most humble and grand. The word my grandfather uses is comfort. So there are cakes and pillows and colors galore, but underneath this more obvious patchwork quilt are places like a quiet room where you can go and hold someone's hand and not have to say anything. Give no story. Make no claim. Where you can live at the edge of your skin for as long as you wish.”

“Now I am not unpatriotic, and I want to do my bit, so I hereby offer my services to my President, my country and my friends to do anything, outside of serving on a commission, that I can in this great movement. But you will have to give me some idea of where "confidence" is. And just who you want it restored to.”

“Now I am practicing as well as a criminal defense lawyer in handling appeals. The court of appeals appointed me to handle cases and although that's not trial work and I don't have to go to court, it kind of satisfies the need I have to practice still and I have transitioned into readiness not to be in trial anymore. It took a little while for me to get used to not doing it and I did miss it for a few years, but eventually I transferred into another life.”

“Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern. The country is grey and brown and white in trees, snows and skies of laughter always diminishing, less funny not just darker, not just grey. It may be the coldest day of the year, what does he think of that? I mean, what do I? And if I do, perhaps I am myself again.”

“Now I am sitting in the Botanic Gardens. Though the puddles are frozen in the shade, you could sit out for ever so long in the sun without feeling cold. No one there but children with their nurses, and old men with pale, dreamy eyes thinking of nothing, perhaps wondering vaguely if they will hold on to see another spring. I am on a bench overlooking the Kelvin, and have been watching the seagulls. Whole flocks have come up inland from the Clyde. There are rooks too, very noisy and restless, deceived perhaps by the sunshine into thinking the winter is over.”