Christopher Hitchens, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere

"In our native terms, the ironic style is often compounded with the sardonic and the hard-boiled; even the effortlessly superior. But irony originates in the glance and the shrug of the loser, the outsider, the despised minority. It is a nuance that comes most effortlessly to the oppressed."

Christopher Hitchens, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere

"Hesitate once, hesitate twice, hesitate a hundred times before employing political standards as a device for the analysis and appreciation of poetry."

Christopher Hitchens, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere

"A melancholy lesson of advancing years is the realisation that you can't make old friends."

Christopher Hitchens, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere

"Dogma in power does have a unique chilling ingredient not exhibited by power, however ghastly, wielded for its own traditional sake."

Christopher Hitchens, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere