“I discovered that I felt at home and alive in the silence, which compelled me to enter my interior world and around there. Without the distraction of constant conversation, the words on the page began to speak directly to my inner self. They were no long expressing ideas that were simply interesting intellectually, but were talking directly to my own yearning and perplexity.”

British author and commentator on religion, born 1944

Karen Armstrong is a British author and commentator on religion. Born in 1944, she is known for her books on comparative religion and for writing from the standpoint of a former Catholic religious sister. She studied English at St Anne's College, Oxford, while still in the convent, and left religious life in 1969. Her work returns often to what the major faiths share, especially compassion and the Golden Rule, and to the movement in her own Christian life from a conservative beginning toward a more liberal and mystical outlook.