When men take pleasure in feeling their minds elevated with strong drink and so indulge their appetite as to disorder their understandings neglect their duty as members of a family or civil society and cast off all regard to religion their case is much to be pitied.

So I remember both medicine because I frequently sick particularly with asthma for which there was no proper treatment then and in religion I had a strong sense of there being a patriarchy.

Thus a man was born into a fixed relation to certain gods as surely as he was born into a relation to his fellow-men and his religion... was simply one side of the general scheme of conduct prescribed for him by his position as a member of society.

Organized religion provides a model of the way all organizations from the state down to the village garden club end a price in terms of a member's freedom of thought and action.

The audience that I try to reach are members of what I call the church alumni association. Now they are people who have not found in institutional religion a God big enough to be God for their world.

But I remember the moment when my father died. I wasn't a very committed Catholic beforehand but when that happened it suddenly all felt so obvious: I now believe religion is our attempt to find an explanation for us to feel more protected.

We saw what happened in Jimmy Carter's administration. President Carter was a good man with the best of intentions. But he came to Washington without a good working relationship with Democratic members of Congress which played a big part in his administration's problems.

I really have always wanted to be a parent and when I hit 36 and had just ended a relationship I remember thinking how much I still wanted it. But I thought I'd adopt.

I'm a hopeless romantic and very much the person in a relationship to go: If things are going well I'll buy the flowers remember the dates of things plan fun nights out.

I don't remember any sibling rivalry growing up because by the time I was really conscious Tom was going away to college. My relationship with him which is a very close one really developed in more recent years.