I am an Episcopalian who takes the faith of my fathers seriously and I would I think be disheartened if my own young children were to turn away from the church when they grow up. I am also a critic of Christianity if by critic one means an observer who brings historical and literary judgment to bear on the texts and traditions of the church.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature the texts our first attempt at cosmology making sense of where we are in the universe our first attempt at health care believing in faith healing our first attempt at philosophy.

I believe my publisher has shown a great deal of faith in me over a lot of years but I'm not prepared to be so arrogant to say that the long-term literary value of my work would compensate them for a financial failure.

Literature overtakes history for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.

You can use your means in a good and bad way. In German-speaking art we had such a bad experience with the Third Reich when stories and images were used to tell lies. After the war literature was careful not to do the same which is why writers began to reflect on the stories they told and to make readers part of their texts. I do the same.

Doesn't all experience crumble in the end to mere literary material?

Artists need some kind of stimulating experience a lot of times which crystallizes when you sing about it or paint it or sculpt it. You literally mold the experience the way you want. It's therapy.

The sole substitute for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through is art and literature.

Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.

Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.