Clive Barker

Author/Movie Producer/Director/Screenwriter

The following statements were made by Mr. Barker on his official website:

"I consider myself a man of faith but the conventional Christian structures of belief - which value a male and judgmental god above a more protean vision of the divine, is for me, too simple, too crude, and frankly, too suspiciously like a notion whipped up by a male priest-class obsessed with keeping itself in power. So...I critique the God of Israel at the same time as conceding His extraordinary power over our imaginations."

"I'm a believer in the sense that (William) Blake was a believer. I'm a believer in the sense that I take the Bible as something which is available for very private interpretation, and that interpretation may not sit well with conventional interpretations. The material is there for investigation and investigation on an intimate level. Its lessons, its wisdom, its serenity, its good sense, its absurdities and malice - it's very malicious at times - are all part of what makes it remarkable. So I suppose my reading of it means I've ended up as a strange kind of believer."