Movies both reflect and create social conditions, but their special charm is to offer fantasy clothes as virtual reality, a world where people consume without the tedium of labor. Characters float in a world where the bill never comes due ... and we wonder why we're a debtor nation!

The Internet is democracy's revenge on democracy.

There are very few heroines in literature who have defined their lives morally rather than romantically and likewise but a handful in film.

American eroticism has always been of a different provenance and complexion than the European variety, an enjoyment both furtive and bland that is closer to a blushing cartoon than a sensual celebration.

[On swingers:] They have gone from Puritanism into promiscuity without passing through sensuality.

There are two cinemas: the films we have actually seen and the memories we have of them.

But one of the attributes of love, like art, is to bring harmony and order out of chaos, to introduce meaning and affect where before there was none, to give rhythmic variations, highs and lows to a landscape that was previously flat.