When someone sets out to be controversial or provocative or shocking as an end in itself, I don't think that's a noble goal.

Over the years, I've realized that I have as much in common with the performance artist, the standup comedian, the screenwriter, as I do with the theologian. I'm in an odd world where I make things and share them with people.

If there's any place where you would express your deepest doubts, it would be church.

For a lot of people in our world today, God has become about believing the right stuff so you don't get in trouble.

We need not be theologians to see that we have shifted responsibility for making the world interesting from God to the newspaperman.

The only times during my religious instruction I remember hearing God's name invoked with any sincere conviction at all was in the oft-repeated and breathtakingly chauvinistic claim that Israel's 'miraculous' military victories over much-stronger enemies proved that He was ever on Zion's side.

He knows the tax code as thoroughly as the pope knows the Lord's Prayer.

My faith and my identity as a Muslim - I never saw it as something that made my job harder. It's just an aspect of who I am.