When we ask bureaucrats to identify who is responsible for fixing anything, they reassure us that there are 'procedures in place.'

Art is head space that is very exclusive: it shuts people out; other people cease to exist.

I think I have written the things I was put on Earth to write.

I think there is that very basic yearning for something or someone to be looking after us, for there to be a framework holding the universe together that is benign and intelligent. We're not going to get rid of that; it's just too scary to be that molecule flying around briefly in a vacuum.

I think if there is a God, it's very important that he has a sense of humour - otherwise, you are in for a very miserable afterlife.

So be it. God created profoundly fallible creatures on this earth, and human history is mostly the story of error and accident.

What does it mean to be Catholic and not a Catholic? I feel adrift, homeless. My Catholic imagination allows me to see the soul as a lit breath, seeking the divine. It persists.

Secularism is categorically not saying that the religious may not speak out publicly or have a say in public life. It is about saying that religion alone should not confer a privileged say in public life, or greater influence on it. It really is as simple as that.