Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchenswas an English-American author, columnist, essayist, orator, religious and literary critic, social critic, and journalist. He contributed to New Statesman, The Nation, The Atlantic, London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Slate, and Vanity Fair. Hitchens was the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of over 30 books, including five collections of essays, on a range of subjects, including politics, literature, and religion. A staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, his confrontational style of debate made him...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth13 April 1949
CountryUnited States of America
I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient.
For the people who ostensibly wish me well or are worried about my immortal soul, I say I take it kindly.
The human wish to credit good things as miraculous and to charge bad things to another account is apparently universal.
I used to wish there was a useful term for those of us who thought American power should be used to remove psychopathic dictators.
The rich world likes and wishes to believe that someone, somewhere, is doing something for the Third World. For this reason, it does not inquire too closely into the motives or practices of anyone who fulfills, however vicariously, this mandate.
In order to be a part of the totalitarian mind-set, it is not necessary to wear a uniform or carry a club or a whip. It is only necessary to wish for your own subjection, and to delight in the subjection of others.
I have personal knowledge that Mr. Blumenthal recounted to other people in the journalistic community the same story about Monica Lewinsky that he told to me and Carol Blue.
The Islamists will try to spoil everything for everyone.
We had to do this because our governments would not make the elemental statement that we stand with Denmark against this atrocious campaign of lies and hatred and violence.
To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental.
Every day, the New York Times carries a motto in a box on its front page. "All the News That's Fit to Print," it says. It's been saying it for decades, day in and day out. I imagine most readers of the canonical sheet have long ceased to notice this bannered and flaunted symbol of its mental furniture. I myself check every day to make sure that the bright, smug, pompous, idiotic claim is still there.
Victor invented me, in a way. He gave me a desk and a sponsor and a place to hang my hat, which was what I needed.
of most of the people I know in the (journalism) profession who heard that story, they know it either directly or indirectly from Mr. Blumenthal.
A speech idiosyncrasy, in the same way as an air quote, is really justifiable only if it's employed very sparingly and if the user consciously intends to be using it.