Creation is a sustained period of bliss, even though the subject can still be very sad. Because there's the triumph of coming through and understanding that you have, and that you did it the way only you could do it. You didn't do it the way somebody told you to do it.

I think the War on Terror is really absurd, especially coming from a country that is founded on terrorism.

At one point I learned transcendental meditation. This was 30-something years ago. It took me back to the way that I naturally was as a child growing up way in the country, rarely seeing people. I was in that state of oneness with creation and it was as if I didn't exist except as a part of everything.

I can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking to any leader - or any person - in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks.

Most religious people in America fully embrace science. So the argument that religion has some issue with science applies to a small fraction of those who declare that they are religious. They just happen to be a very vocal fraction, so you got the impression that there are more of them than there actually is.

America's a faith-based experiment as a country. We should celebrate and invite faith. And our motto is, 'In God We Trust.' This isn't something that divides; this is something that pulls together and lifts us up.

There can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society.

Pakistan is heir to an intellectual tradition of which the illustrious exponent was the poet and philosopher Mohammad Iqbal. He saw the future course for Islamic societies in a synthesis between adherence to the faith and adjustment to the modern age.