When I was growing up in Iraq, there was an unbroken belief in progress and a great sense of optimism. It was a moment of nation building.
We should work for simple, good, undecorated things, but things which are in harmony with the human being and organically suited to the little man in the street.
I wanted to be considered a good craftsman. I wanted my dresses to be constructed like buildings, molded to the curves of the female form, stylizing its shape.
We must have Christian ethics for our children, good and strong, but we must make them attractive, too, and it can be done.
I don't think it's a good thing to have Christian states, Muslim states, or any kind of ethnic states.
In my run-ins with Christians... I find that they really are good moral people. And we overlap on everything, and they don't seem to be the kind of people that are waiting to hear voices to tell them what to do.
Don't be afraid to take time to learn. It's good to work for other people. I worked for others for 20 years. They paid me to learn.
It is very important as a human being to be able to laugh at yourself and circumstances and particularly as a Christian. We have to know that good times don't last always and bad times don't last always.
It's very important for cities all around the world to reinvent themselves, and Glasgow is a good example of that. The Scots are very nice. I don't think they are burdened by their history.
I think it's good if areas get upgraded and gentrified, as long as the people who always lived there can stay. But they get pushed out to some place.
I often think that woman is more free in Islam than in Christianity. Woman is more protected by Islam than by the faith which preaches monogamy.
Your belief system tends to be a function of how you were raised. Being raised in the Midwest and in a relatively conservative household, my views were shaped by my upbringing, by my Christian faith.
And Jesus, the heart of the Christian faith is the wildest, most radical guy you'd ever come across.
It is no longer a question of a Christian going about to convert others to the faith, but of each one being ready to listen to the other and so to grow together in mutual understanding.
Like Christians, Soccerians argue that you should not judge the essence of their faith by the loopy activities of its followers. But the Beautiful Game is in fact quite the opposite. It is badly designed and riddled with flaws.
And so, today, if the state can no longer appeal to the old moral principles that belong to the Christian tradition, it will be forced to create a new official faith and new moral principles which will be binding on its citizens.
I don't really go down one path. I wouldn't call myself a Buddhist, or a Catholic or a Christian or a Muslim, or Jewish. I couldn't put myself into any organized faith.
We certainly love the Muslim people. But that is not the faith of this country. And that is not the religion that built this nation. The people of the Christian faith and the Jewish faith are the ones who built America, and it is not Islam.
My favorite book is 'Redeeming Love.' It was my first as a born-again Christian, my statement of faith, and the most exciting year I've spent writing anything.
It's true that when Christianity is socially powerful, faith can look from the outside as if it is mainly a matter of membership, of participation in the vast synchronised swim of institutions.
I have a Christian worldview and so it shapes the way that I view issues. I don't apologize for that, and I don't think people of faith ought to shrink away from being in the public arena.
