British-American author and essayist Christopher Hitchens died Thursday from complications of esophageal cancer. He was 62.
Hitchens was known for his wry monthly columns for Vanity Fair magazine.
"There will never be another like Christopher. A man of ferocious intellect, who was as vibrant on the page as he was at the bar," said Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. "Those who read him felt they knew him, and those who knew him were profoundly fortunate souls."
Hitchens was born in Portsmouth, England, in 1949 and graduated from Oxford University in 1970.
He landed a job with Vanity Fair as a contributing editor in November 1992.
"Christopher was a master of the stunning line and the biting quip, and he had few equals in the sphere of commentary, let alone social life," a Vanity Fair statement said.
Hitchens also wrote for other publications like New Statesman, the London Evening Standard, London's Daily Express, The Nation, Harper's, The Spectator, The Times Literary Supplement, New York Newsday, The Atlantic, and Slate.
CNN's Piers Morgan tweeted about Hitchens from his official Twitter page Thursday night.
"RIP Christopher Hitchens - greatest literary provocateur of my lifetime. Huge talent, huge loss," Morgan wrote.
Later in life, as Hitchens went through his very public battle with cancer, he became a strong voice for atheism and a strident critic of religion. He went on talk shows and lectures to defend not believing in God.
In 2010, he had a public debate with his younger brother, Peter Hitchens, who is a Christian and a writer, on whether civilization can survive without God.
"There used to be a word which could be used unironically," he said. "People meant what they said when they said the word Christendom. There was a Christian world. Partly evolved, partly carved out by the sword, partly defended by the sword, giving way and expanding at times. But it was a meaningful name for a community of belief and value that endured for many, many centuries. It had many splendors to its name, but it's all gone now."
