For many people religion can be so easy they stumble right over it.

When I was almost 13 I was ripe for religion. I was actually just plain ripe.

How do you live with evil? Art is traditionally - certainly with my secular background - the answer, but art is very self-referential, whereas religion claims to go beyond the bounds of human existence.

There are several reasons why Russians view the oppressive state positively. First, in the Russian Orthodox religion, there is an understanding of authority as something sent by God.

Although religion was around me my whole life I never felt it was forced upon me. It is my centring, my grounding, the soul of me. I feel I'm nothing without it.