My business is to prevent the future.

Where would you like to go, what would you really like to do with your life? See Istanbul, Port Said, Nairobi, Budapest. Write a book. Smoke too many cigarettes. Fall off a cliff but get caught in a tree halfway down. Get shot at a few times in a dark alley on a Morrocan midnight. Love a beautiful woman.

How do you get so empty? Who takes it out of you?

The problem in our country isn't with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. Look at the magazines, the newspapers around us - it's all junk, all trash, tidbits of news. The average TV ad has 120 images a minute. Everything just falls off your mind. You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

I believe in having fun first, and along the way, if you teach people, if you influence people, well and good.

In order for a thing to be horrible it has to suffer a change you can recognize.

And suddenly everything, absolutely everything, was there.