I remember how my mother would bring us to chapel on Sundays... and my father used to wait outside. One of the things that I picked up from my father and my mother was the sense that religion often gets in the way of God. For me, at least, it got in the way.

Before I took the veil, I was ornamented for the ceremony, and was clothed in a rich dress belonging to the Convent, which was used on such occasions; and placed not far from the altar in the chapel, in the view of a number of spectators who had assembled, perhaps about forty.

On the night of the winter solstice, when the dead get their annual reprieve, they go up to the 24-hour donut shop and wedding chapel to get hitched. Marriage is a good and proper pursuit for dead people. For a while, it relieves the dark, shuddering loneliness of the afterlife.

I went to Colby College in Waterville, ME and did picture it when I was writing 'Cum Laude.' So many of the physical details were included, like the loop where people jogged. The story of the chapel is also borrowed from Colby... but the students and cast of characters are fictional.

I was sent to boarding school - a grim place. The only good thing the headmaster did for us was every Sunday evening in the winter he would show us films in the chapel. He couldn't afford a sound projector, so we saw silent films, which you could then still rent from photographic shops.

When you're at home for Duke-Carolina, you have a crowd of close to 10,000 around you, loving you. That's awesome. But it's also a lot of fun in Chapel Hill, where it's you, your teammates and your coaches, and no one else. I enjoyed the games at Chapel Hill a little more because of that.

I grew up on the South Island of New Zealand, in a city chosen and beloved by my parents for its proximity to the mountains - Christchurch is two hours distant from the worn saddle of Arthur's Pass, the mountain village that was and is my father's spiritual touchstone, his chapel and cathedral in the wild.

I studied journalism at The University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. I did my graduate work at Emerson in Boston, and I was actually a reporter for a year in New York and New Jersey. It dawned on me that I wasn't cut out for that line of work. I mean... there's a certain thing that really good reports have that I just didn't.

Every night, half an hour before curtain up, the bells of St. Malachy's, the Actors' Chapel on New York's 49th Street, peal the tune of 'There's No Business Like Show Business.' If you walk the streets of the theatre district before a show and see the vast, enthusiastic lines it sounds like a calling: there is certainly no place like Broadway.

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