I'm always captivated by stories of women who find a way to be daring - misbehaving women.

Gender and race got very entwined in the 19th century, as abolition broke out, and then women wanted the right to speak about it.

In the early 1800s, religion was often used as a way to keep slavery in place. Slaves were forced to attend the church of their owners, listen to selective dogma that kept them obedient and subservient.

When I wrote 'The Secret Life of Bees,' I was writing about civil rights.

The people who founded America, who fought for its freedom, did not look to anyone else to get them out of their troubles. They took matters into their own hands and answered only to God and their peers. In today's world, sacrifice and hardship are not in the everyday language, and instant gratification is foremost.

It is clear that rituals and sacrifices can bring people together, and it may well be that a group that does such things has an advantage over one that does not. But it is not clear why a religion has to be involved. Why are gods, souls, an afterlife, miracles, divine creation of the universe, and so on brought in?

The word 'God' usually signifies 'Lord', but every lord is not a God. It is the dominion of a spiritual being which constitutes a God: a true, supreme, or imaginary dominion makes a true, supreme, or imaginary God.

The No. 9, a team's centre forward, is a number that means a lot and, God willing, I hope to inherit it some day.