Having written Camp David as a drama, I could see the drama maybe a little more clearly when I wrote the book.

There are many countries where you can only believe more or you can believe less. But in the United States we have this incredible smorgasbord, and it really interests me why people are drawn to one faith rather than another, especially to a system of belief that to an outsider seems absurd or dangerous.

People often pulled into Scientology want to address personal problems in their life, and Scientology says we have technology that addresses these kinds of problems. Just focusing on the problems and trying to remedy them can be helpful.

Journalism is a flawed profession, but it has a self-correcting mechanism. The rule of journalism is: talk to everybody.

Hubbard set up the Church of Scientology in Hollywood in 1954 for a reason. He understood that celebrity was increasingly a feature of American public life, and celebrities themselves were going to be worshipped as minor deities were in the ancient world. The idea was: if you could get them, think how many people would follow.

We hear a lot about theological justifications for the conflicts, but very little about the scientific evidence, which in no way supports them. The time period in which Moses was leading his people out of Egypt, into the Promised Land, the Promised Land was Egypt. We know that. Archaeological records are very clear. The Egyptians were avid bureaucrats even in those days and kept very scrupulous records. I think it's important for us to realize this conflict is built on a legend. It has no scientific support.

I think when I write movies and plays and books and magazine articles, they're all storytelling, and reality is the common denominator that binds them.