In the private arena, you can do whatever you wish, and people do. These crazy evangelical preachers get on the radio and TV and say incredible things.

I experience God as the power of love.

I don't make that decision [what next book will be] until I've read enough to know that I've got something different to say and I know how to say it.

That's why the virgin birth never gets rid of the human mother. The story only gets rid of the human father. So Jesus' life was the life of God nurtured through the Virgin Mary. That's because the virgin birth died as a literal story as soon as we discovered that women had an egg cell. It's interesting to watch what the Roman church did about that.

Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.

I want the traditional family upheld, but I don't want it upheld to the detriment of other people.

When I grew up in the South, I was taught that segregation was the will of God, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. I was taught that women were by nature in inferior to men, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. I was taught that it was okay to hate other religions, and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it.