Creation, to me, is to try to orchestrate the universe to understand what surrounds us. Even if, to accomplish that, we use all sorts of strategems which in the end prove completely incapable of staving off chaos.

Human relationships are patterned and cross-patterned and restricted and limited and delimited and caged and freed again by the elaborate conventions, rules and games which we call civilisation. They're often absurd and farcical, and sometimes they're tragic, yet we acknowledge that they are necessary.

Life is full of a thousand red herrings, and it takes the history of a civilisation to work out which are the red herrings and which aren't.

English culture is highly literary-based.

As you probably know, I'm often accused of intellectual exhibitionism and all forms of elitism. Although I can understand this point of view, it's a rather wasted argument because, if we regard areas of information as being elite and therefore somehow not usable, it means our centre-ground of activity becomes very, very impoverished.

It serves the purpose of not serving a purpose, surely quite a valid one.

There are many photos of Eisenstein. I think he was quite vain, and he liked photos of him. Being a virgin at 33 is strange now, but let's not be too high-minded about that.