There is much depressing evidence that the religious voice is required to stay out of the public square only when it is pressed in a conservative cause.

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.

I think of my novels as entertainments.

If people believe that they are marrying out of love and free choice rather than out of duty, they are more likely to decide, if love should die, that the free choice to join together is no more significant than the free choice to part, and to look for love elsewhere; those married out of duty expect less love to begin with, and what duty has brought together, duty may keep together.

Rumor is rarely more interesting than fact, but it is always more readily available.

There is much depressing evidence that the religious voice is required to stay out of the public square only when it is pressed in a conservative cause.

To be black and an intellectual in America is to live in a box. On the box is a label, not of my own choosing.