I don't believe in God, though I'm not prepared to call myself an atheist either. You know the old phrase: 'There are no atheists in foxholes.' I've never been in a foxhole, and if I ever find myself in a foxhole, I'll let you know if I believe in God or not.
I suppose people hadn't really thought each decade should have its own character and be different from the others till the 1920s, although I remember in a nineteenth-century Russian novel someone remarked that a character was a typical man of the 1830s - progressive and an atheist.
I went on a Buddha jag. I read 'Confession of a Buddhist Atheist' by Stephen Batchelor and Karen Armstrong's biography of Buddha, which is a great book.
Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It's because I'm not quite an atheist and it worries me. There's that little bit that holds on: 'Well, I'm almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months.'
As an atheist, I think there are lots of things religions get up to which are of value to non-believers - and one of those things is trying to be a bit better than we normally manage to be.
I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution, and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.
I could never call myself an atheist; my parents could, quite happily. I always felt like there was a little bit more out there, and was always into observing the world from a slightly more spiritual, as opposed to scientific, perspective.
