The truth of history crowds out the truth of fiction - as if one were obliged to choose between them.

Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.

It's not 'natural' to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting, articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little - have few verbal means. Eloquence - thinking in words - is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality. In groups, it's more natural to sing, to dance, to pray: given, rather than invented (individual) speech.

In the valley of sorrow, spread your wings.

To be an artist or a writer is to be this weird thing - a hand worker in an era of mass production.

The taste for worst-case scenarios reflects the need to master fear of what is felt to be uncontrollable. It also expresses an imaginative complicity with disaster.

We are told we must choose - the old or the new. In fact, we must choose both. What is a life if not a series of negotiations between the old and the new?