All possibility of understanding is rooted in the ability to say no.

One of the author's most ancient roles is to call the community to account for its hypocrisies and bad faith.

Lying is the most simple form of self-defence.

I believe that courage is morally neutral. I can well imagine wicked people being brave and good people being timid or afraid. I don't consider it a moral virtue.

Cinema is a kind of pan-art. It can use, incorporate, engulf virtually any other art: the novel, poetry, theater, painting, sculpture, dance, music, architecture. Unlike opera, which is a (virtually) frozen art form, the cinema is and has been a fruitfully conservative medium of ideas and styles of emotions.

I'm not sure at all that literature should be studied on the university level. ... Why should people study books? Isn't it rather silly to study Pride and Prejudice. Either you get it or you don't.

Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.