James Clavell

Quotation from Whirlwind, 

How can anyone deal with these lunatics who use their beliefs as a coverall and ‘God’ whenever they wish to close a legitimate line of logic? They’re all mad, blinkered! They won’t understand as we Japanese do you’ve got to be tolerant about other people’s beliefs, and that life is from nothing into nothing, and heaven and hell and god merely opium smoke from an aberrated brain – until proven otherwise!

(Whirlwind, 1987, BookClub Associates (Hodder and Stoughton
Ltd, p. 988)