American culture is torn between our long romance with violence and our terror of the devastation wrought by war and crime and environmental havoc.

It is, I suppose, the common grief of children at having to protect their parents from reality. It is bitter for the young to see what awful innocence adults grow into, that terrible vulnerability that must be sheltered from the rodent mire of childhood.

Within a social structure, a familial structure, or a cultural structure of various kinds, there is a substitute for actual freedom. I mean, actual freedom is a very abstract notion; we have no idea what it means, except within a context - freedom to do what? So within these social structures, freedom becomes defined as power, your ability to make choices, and the power relationship within a family, any family.

My worst is all out in the open. It makes it necessary for people to tell you about themselves.

He must love me, i thought, amazed. A faint whiff of nausea hit me at seeing pain as proof of love, but it seemed true. Unavoidable.

Every doorway, every intersection has a story.

But the animation has become very good, and I think that a movie is not a book, and a book is not a movie.