Not even the most secular among us can fail to be uplifted by Christianity's architectural legacy - the great cathedrals. These immense and glorious buildings were erected in an era of constricted horizons, both in time and in space.

Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories, the streets, the cathedrals of the imagination.

As regards my own 'philosophy,' I continue to be inspired by the music, liturgy and architectural tradition of the Anglican Church in which I was brought up. No one can fail to be uplifted by great cathedrals - such as that at Ely, near my home in Cambridge.

The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.

If you want to humble an empire, it makes sense to maim its cathedrals. They are symbols of its faith, and when they crumple and burn, it tells us we are not so powerful and we can't be safe.

Art used to be made in the name of faith. We made cathedrals, we made stained-glass windows, we made murals.

My destiny is to remind you to look up from the castles you're building in the sand long enough to notice the cathedrals that God's building all around you - without you, without your sweat, without your tears, without your consent. While you dream your dreams, he's busy building your destiny. And there is as much beauty in your destiny as there was in your dream. Let go and believe that whatever its is, it will be beautiful.

Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all.-Why then do you try to "enlarge" your mind? Subtilize it

Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories the streets the cathedrals of the imagination.

The old cathedrals are good but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.