We have to evolve, we have to change, and in order to do that, we have to initiate the change.

Every Pixar movie has its own rules that viewers have to accept, understand, and enjoy understanding. The voices of the toys in the 'Toy Story' films, for example, are never audible to humans.

A hallmark of a healthy creative culture is that its people feel free to share ideas, opinions, and criticisms. Our decision-making is better when we draw on the collective knowledge and unvarnished opinions of the group.

Candor is the key to collaborating effectively. Lack of candor leads to dysfunctional environments.

In some ways, I had a traditional 'old South' upbringing, meaning that I spent some time in a military school, and acquired an inoculum of the military ethic that is still with me today: honor, duty, loyalty.

So in my freshman year at the University of Alabama, learning the literature on evolution, what was known about it biologically, just gradually transformed me by taking me out of literalism and increasingly into a more secular, scientific view of the world.

I thought perhaps it should be recognized that religious people, including fundamentalists, are quite intelligent, many of them are highly educated, and they should be treated with complete respect.

The biological evolutionary perception of life and of human qualities is radically different from that of traditional religion, whether it's Southern Baptist or Islam or any religion that believes in a supernatural supervalance over humanity.

Because the living environment is what really sustains us.

People respect nonfiction but they read novels.

In my heart, I'm an Alabaman who went up north to work.

In 2010, my two Harvard mathematician colleagues and I dismantled kin-selection theory, which was the reigning theory of the origin of altruism at the time.

I had reached a point in my career in which I was ready to try something new in my writing, and the idea of a novel has always been in the back of my mind.

In addition I wanted to write a Southern novel, because I'm a Southerner.

I grew up as a Southern Baptist with strict adherence to the Bible, which I read as a youngster.

Religious belief itself is an adaptation that has evolved because we're hard-wired to form tribalistic religions.

Of course, there is no reconciliation between the theory of evolution by natural selection and the traditional religious view of the origin of the human mind.

Once I feel I'm right, I have enjoyed provoking.

For me, the peculiar qualities of faith are a logical outcome of this level of biological organization.

America in particular imposes an horrendous burden on the world. We have this wonderful standard of living but it comes at enormous cost.

By any reasonable measure of achievement, the faith of the Enlightenment thinkers in science was justified.

Theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really privy to the thoughts of God?

Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society.

Real biologists who actually do the research will tell you that they almost never find a phenomenon, no matter how odd or irrelevant it looks when they first see it, that doesn't prove to serve a function. The outcome itself may be due to small accidents of evolution.