For me, prayer is not so much me setting out a shopping list of requests for God to consider as it is a way of 'keeping company with God.'

One of the greatest things about writing as a profession is that the words of Tolstoy, Chesterton and Dostoyevsky have lived for a hundred years and are just as powerful today. Their words have changed me just as much as the people I actually met.

The world says you gain your life by getting more and more and more and more, but Jesus says, 'No, that leads to death. You get it back by giving it away and when you give it away you get it back.'

Much of the misgiving that Muslims feel for the West stems from our strong emphasis on freedom, always a risky enterprise. I've heard some say they would rather rear their children in a closely guarded Islamic society than in the United States, where freedom so often leads to decadence.

I heard stories from my mother's mother who was an American Indian. She was spiritual, although she did not go to church, but she had the hum. She used to tell me stories of the rivers.

I am very grateful to our Muslim population. One of the things we've been doing is stepping up our inter-faith dialogue with the Muslim population. And I think that helped very much in their support for me.

With increasing poverty, welfare dependency and violence in the United States, religion and religious organizations have an important role to play combating societal problems.

My parents were both very intellectually honest, straightforward, and for them, faith meant that you were fully engaged.