To try to turn Iraq into a liberal democracy is absolutely crazy. Islam has no understanding of the separation between church and state because they don't understand Islam to be a church.

Reading is an exercise for learning how to write and vice versa. I have read myself into being a Christian, but I have also written myself into being a Christian.

William James was not a prophet. He was a philosopher whose philosophy reflected his profound humanity.

By the time I had got to college, I had begun to read and had decided that most of what Christians believed could not be credible. So I became a philosophy major at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.

I am not a snowflake. I am not a sweet, infantilising symbol of fragility and life. I am a strong, fierce, flawed adult woman. I plan to remain that way, in life and in death.

Grief falls upon human beings as the rain, not selecting good or evil, visiting the innocent, condemning those who have done no wrong.

One thing I've heard that makes sense to me about grief is that there's this conception that it's a thing that you process, and then you're done processing it. But really it's not a thing that has an end, it's just what life is like now. You are living with this now, probably forever.

A filmmaker doesn't have to suffer to show suffering. You just have to understand it. You don't have to die to shoot a death scene.