Stephen Colbert delivered an impressive on-the-spot response to Dua Lipa’s questions about the role that his faith plays in his life:

“I’m a Christian, I’m a Catholic, and that’s always connected to the idea of love and sacrifice being somehow related and giving yourself to other people and that death is not defeat. …

“Sadness is like a little bit of emotional death, but not a defeat if you can find a way to laugh about it. Because that laughter keeps you from having fear of it. And fear is the thing that keeps you turning to evil devices to save you from sadness. As Robert Hayden said, “We must not be frightened or cajoled into accepting evil as our deliverance from evil. We must keep struggling to maintain our humanity, though monsters of abstraction threaten and police us.”

“If there’s some relationship between my faith and my comedy, it’s that no matter what happens you are never defeated. You must understand and see this in the light of eternity and find some way to love and laugh with each other.”