First, that I've got tickets to see Hitchens speak in uh May? I think May. Yeah, May 23.

And second, when I saw Martin Amis a couple of months ago, he was asked about introducing Hitchens, a good friend, to Saul Bellow, a mentor and very dear friend. He told the story, which was an amusing anecdote, and then he said, well, you know the thing about Chris is that he's a contrarian. And you have to respect that. Because in his role as contrarian, he works very hard and sometimes painfully to closely examine accepted truths and norms. And the reason that that is sometimes painful is that his integrity is such that he has to take the opposing view on things that he himself holds dear, in order to test them.

I thought that was high praise indeed.