Dan Brown

When I was a kid, the miracles of my life were the Resurrection, a candlelight service on New Year's Eve, the Virgin Birth, and the Three Wise Men.

I spend my life essentially alone at a computer. That doesn't change. I have the same challenges every day.

I spent some time in India and thought I might write about Hinduism. But it's so far removed from my experience I couldn't even get my mind around it to write about it.

I've been through a lot. I've thought a lot about life, and I've spent a lot of time studying history and science.

Writing is a solitary existence. Making a movie is controlled chaos - thousands of moving parts and people. Every decision is a compromise. If you're writing and you don't like how your character looks or talks, you just fix it. But in a movie, if there's something you don't like, that's tough.

It's funny, I don't know where I would place myself in the literary landscape. I really just write the book that I would want to read. I put on the blinders, and I really - it is, for me, that simple.

If a reviewer is beating me up, I just say, 'Oh well, my writing is not to his or her taste.' And that's as far as it goes. Because I will simultaneously read a review where somebody says, 'Oh my God, I had so much fun reading this book and I learned so much.'

I'm trying to write books that taste like ice cream but have the nutrition of vegetables.

I read nonfiction almost exclusively - both for research and also for pleasure. When I read fiction, it's almost always in the thriller genre, and it needs to rivet me in the opening few chapters.

I consider myself a student of many religions. The more I learn, the more questions I have. For me, the spiritual quest will be a life-long work in progress.

That is the definition of faith - acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove.

I grew up in a very religious household. My mom was a church organist. I was a religious kid.