Christopher Hitchens quotes

Quotes by and about Christopher Hitchens

(Continued from his main entry on the site.)

Hitchens: "I have very few friends, only acquaintances. ... I don't like most people [and] I find it very easy indeed to quarrel with them."

Hitchens: "I think that hatred ... is a terrific way of getting you out of bed in the morning and keeping you going. If you don't let it get out of hand, it can be canalized into writing. In this country where people love to be nonjudgmental ... there are an awful lot of bubble reputations floating around that one wouldn't be doing one's job if one didn't itch to prick."

Hitchens: "Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence."

Hitchens: "I sometimes wish I had a large family to fall back on, but I was never much of a family values person."

[Reviewing Bob Woodward's book 'State of Denial':]
Hitchens: "I try to maintain a relationship with language and style; Woodward doesn't care. His writing is almost unreadable. His book is much harder to read than it must have been to write."

Anne Applebaum: "[He had a] sense of humor so dry you could hear it crack."

Hitchens: "I don't ask what [others] think of me, but I sometimes wonder if they ask themselves what I think of them. But I'm at pains to tell them; to dissolve any doubt."

Jacob Weisberg: "His originality was a constant, his independence an unstoppable engine."

John Cook: "Hitchens [clung to his] ardor for the invasion of Iraq ... long after it became clear that a grotesque error had been made."