In 1975, when my students were kidnapped by rebels, I was accused of hiding instead of trying to save them, and of not giving enough money for their ransom. I wasn’t believed.

I spend a lot of time balancing between faith and disbelief.

No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, can ever compel the soul of a person to believe or to disbelieve.

He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him.

I have often been downcast but never in despair; I regard our hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time. In my diary, I treat all the privations as amusing.

At first, I was called a quack, a charlatan, and worse, year after year, in Australia, England and the United States, by men who simply refused to believe that a nurse from ‚the bush‘ could devise a treatment which succeeded where they had failed.

No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.

Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels – men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

Nature is wont to hide herself.

My dear wife has, I would say, probably never opened a religious book, and seems to be one of those people to whom the whole idea is utterly remote and absurd.

A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.

I think much has been made of this alter ego business. I mean, I actually stopped creating characters in 1975 – for albums, anyway.

No one was more shocked or angry than I was when we didn’t find the weapons. I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do.

But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.

It I talked about Watergate, I was described as struggling to free myself from the morass. If I did not talk about Watergate, I was accused of being out of touch with reality.

If someone told me I could play two Asian Cup finals, I wouldn’t have believed it.

Just like the Alamo, somebody damn well needed to go to their aid. Well, by God, I’m going to Viet Nam’s aid!

I got quite annoyed after the Haiti earthquake. A baby was taken from the wreckage and people said it was a miracle. It would have been a miracle had God stopped the earthquake. More wonderful was that a load of evolved monkeys got together to save the life of a child that wasn’t theirs.

There are disasters that happen – Hurricane Harvey came up, and you had people self-organizing through the community and getting in boats and driving around rescuing people coordinated ad hoc through this network. That’s not a media function.

I don’t believe it. Prove it to me and I still won’t believe it.

I really don’t believe in magic.