My parents were atheists, strong atheists. I never got the answer 'God.'

In fact, the idea of a God who is both all-powerful and all good is a logical impossibility.

There is no logical reason to believe in God. There are emotional reasons, certainly, but I cannot have faith that nothing is something simply because it would be reassuring. I can no more believe in God than I can believe an invisible monkey lives in my ass; however, I would believe in both if they could be scientifically proven.

It was a very big principle in my upbringing that you should respect everybody's work. The street sweeper. Everybody. You should never look down on anybody for their work.

People tend to judge presidents on how the economy performs, and yet we don't expect them to have the power to do much about it. Or we don't want them to exercise that power, if they were to have it.

So even though I consider myself a fairly upbeat person, energetic and things like that, I never do very well on happiness tests.