My grandmother's first husband was a spiritualist medium. What fascinates me about that is the balance between conviction and sincerity and trickery, which is also something that novelists are very familiar with.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My wife has been my greatest earthly inspiration. She excels in eloquence, the poetry of words, empathy and graciousness.
I don't consider myself an artist necessarily, but craftsmen or people in the arts, their spiritualism is sort of when you're writing well or performing well or doing whatever you do well, there's an element of that that's either God-given, a talent that you're not necessarily responsible for.
I was raised in a heavily Catholic family. Early and consistent encounters with mysticism.
I see my role as a scholar announcing that women's feelings of unworthiness and insecurity often may be traced to training in a male-oriented religion, and I'm trying to investigate a richer spiritual life for both sexes.
God keeps me grounded as well as my husband, Keith Douglas, who is such an inspiration to me. He's an author, speaker, and businessman. He's just a great husband and blessing.
My grandfather was a faith healer and medium, and he always encouraged faith in the unseen. I believe in fortune tellers.
My father had always identified himself as a writer to my mother when they met. When they met, he was writing this great novel, there was no doubt about it. Part of why she left him was this delusion of greatness and identifying it very directly with being an artist.
My dear wife has, I would say, probably never opened a religious book, and seems to be one of those people to whom the whole idea is utterly remote and absurd.
Every woman I have known has actually deepened my spiritual awareness. Even if I have been a selfish man and treated them badly... There were two women, I won't name them, who had a powerful religious effect on me. The ancient idea of a muse is there.
I used to be married to a woman who pursued every spiritual trend with tremendous passion and dragged me along. I don't believe in anything. I'd seen mediums and readers.