It is very reasonable to worry about the harm done by organized religion and to prefer looser and more private arrangements.

Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego their identity.

War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity it destroys religion it destroys states it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.

In England it's a rare thing to see a player smoking but all in all I prefer that to an alcoholic. The relationship with alcohol is a real problem in English football and in the short term it's much more harmful to a sportsman. It weakens the body which becomes more susceptible to injury.

I usually write for the individual reader -though I would like to have many such readers. There are some poets who write for people assembled in big rooms so they can live through something collectively. I prefer my reader to take my poem and have a one-on-one relationship with it.

I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches copies of copies until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity doubt uncertainty not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material but because that is the way we humans really are.

I should prefer to have a politician who regularly went to a massage parlour than one who promised a laptop computer for every teacher.

In politics it is necessary either to betray one's country or the electorate. I prefer to betray the electorate.

France is not poetic she even feels in fact a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.

A happy arrangement: many people prefer cats to other people and many cats prefer people to other cats.