Dawkins considers that all faith is blind faith and that Christian and Muslim children are brought up to believe unquestioningly. Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar school thought that.

It's possible that the 2012 general-election race will be the least overtly religious one since 1972 the last campaign before Roe v. Wade and the rise of Jimmy Carter brought evangelicalism into the political mainstream. That's because faith remains a complicated issue for Obama who is still wrongly thought to be a Muslim in some quarters.

Those of us who were brought up as Christians and have lost our faith have retained the sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyses us in action.

I've always thought that as long as directors and casting directors don't see me as just Harry Potter I'll be OK. People have shown a lot of faith in me and I owe them a huge debt. They're letting me prove that I'm serious about this.

Should doubt knock at your doorway just say to those skeptical disturbing rebellious thoughts I propose to stay with my faith with the faith of my people.

Action and faith enslave thought both of them in order not be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection criticism and doubt.

Question: Why are we Masters of our Fate the captains of our souls? Because we have the power to control our thoughts our attitudes. That is why many people live in the withering negative world. That is why many people live in the Positive Faith world.

I forbid you agnostic doubting thoughts to destroy the house of my faith.

I made a very conscious effort to finish 'The Cypress House' before 'So Cold the River' launched because I thought that would help build a buffer between my writing and any impact that came from either the success or the failure of that first book.

Thoughtless risks are destructive of course but perhaps even more wasteful is thoughtless caution which prompts inaction and promotes failure to seize opportunity.

Failure it is thought is what sells and what people want to hear and read about. I am not so sure.

Los Angeles was an impression of failure of disappointment of despair and of oddly makeshift lives. This is California? I thought.

Before I was married I didn't consider my failure to manage even basic hand tools a feminist inadequacy. I thought it had more to do with being Jewish. The Jews I knew growing up didn't do 'do-it-yourself.' When my father needed to hammer something he generally used his shoe and the only real tool he owned was a pair of needle-nose pliers.

The main reason for the failure of the modern medical science is that it is dealing with results and not causes. Nothing more than the patching up of those attacked and the burying of those who are slain without a thought being given to the real strong hold.

The mere thought of divorce terrified me. To me divorce symbolized failure.

We create success or failure on the course primarily by our thoughts.

I have a tendency to sabotage relationships I have a tendency to sabotage everything. Fear of success fear of failure fear of being afraid. Useless good-for-nothing thoughts.

In high school in sport I had a coach who told me I was much better than I thought I was and would make me do more in a positive sense. He was the first person who taught me not to be afraid of failure.

Creative risk taking is essential to success in any goal where the stakes are high. Thoughtless risks are destructive of course but perhaps even more wasteful is thoughtless caution which prompts inaction and promotes failure to seize opportunity.

Lord of the Rings was my first experience making movies and at the time I had no ideas how movies were done. I thought that's the way they're done so in a way I had nothing to compare it to.

I'd done table reads for my own screenplays and I always thought they were so much fun. Why couldn't we do these for other classic screenplays and bring them to life? You can experience live theater where you get to see plays produced by different directors and different casts but there's really nothing like that for movie scripts.

I always thought that one of the reasons why a painter likes especially to have other painters look at his or her work is the shared experience of having pushed paint around.

So that ends my first experience of matrimony which I always thought a highly over-rated performance.

I can't control what people think. I'm not trying to manipulate people's thoughts or sentiments. I write all the time. You have to experience life make observations and ask questions. It's machine-like how things are run now in hip-hop and my ambitions are different.