In contemporary American culture, the religions are more and more treated as just passing beliefs - almost as fads - rather than as the fundaments upon which the devout build their lives.

Richard John Neuhaus, in his well-known book The Naked Public Square, tells us that in America, the public square has become openly hostile to religion.

Love is a gift we deliver when we would rather not.

Lots of white people think black people are stupid. They are stupid themselves for thinking so, but regulation will not make them smarter.

In our sensible zeal to keep religion from dominating our politics, we have created a political and legal culture that presses the religiously faithful to be other than themselves, to act publicly, and sometimes privately as well, as though their faith does not matter to them.

One sees a trend in our political and legal cultures toward treating religious beliefs as arbitrary and unimportant, a trend supported by a rhetoric that implies that there is something wrong with religious devotion.

So much emotion goes into writing fiction.