Catholicism is not a soothing religion. It's a painful religion. We're all gluttons for punishment.

If I were going to convert to any religion I would probably choose Catholicism because it at least has female saints and the Virgin Mary.

If you grow up in a very strong religion like Catholicism you certainly cultivate in yourself a certain taste for the intensity of ideas.

My first memories of religion were being taken to Episcopal church. My father was Catholic but my mother I believe was Episcopal. So I sort of veered off into the watered-down version of Catholicism.

Although I'm an atheist who believes only in great nature I recognize the spiritual richness and grandeur of the Roman Catholicism in which I was raised.

Catholicism is a wide tent in terms of political and legal positions. We could have nine Catholics on the Supreme Court and a great deal of diversity toward the law.

I'm a lapsed Quaker. I don't go to meetings any more. But I'm very drawn to Catholicism - all that glitter. I'd love to be a Catholic. I think it would be fantastic - faith forgiveness absolution extreme unction - all these wonderful words. I don't think anyone who was ever born a Catholic hasn't died a Catholic no matter how lapsed they are.

Anyone who really studies Catholicism deeply is aware of the mystical nature of our faith. Even references to Christ's mystical body has connections to that principle.

Catholicism played such a huge part in my life I would not have survived without my faith.

Well I think that Catholicism's basic foundation of faith is personal conscience. I think it's between you and God not you and the Church.

Damien Hirst is the Elvis of the English art world its ayatollah deliverer and big-thinking entrepreneurial potty-mouthed prophet and front man. Hirst synthesizes punk Pop Art Jeff Koons Marcel Duchamp Francis Bacon and Catholicism.

As a precocious teen I dreamed of being Graham Greene. Well as it turned out I never wrote a great novel sadly and I never converted to Catholicism happily but I did do one thing he did. That is in middle age I moved to a seaside town and got into a right barney with the local powers-that-be.