That even an apocalypse can be made to seem part of the ordinary horizon of expectation constitutes an unparalleled violence that is being done to our sense of reality, to our humanity.

Shouting has never made me understand anything.

In good films, there is always a directness that entirely frees us from the itch to interpret.

One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves.

Self-censorship, the most important and most successful form of censorship, is rampant. Debate is identified with dissent, which is in turn identified with disloyalty. There is a widespread feeling that, in this new, open-ended emergency, we may not be able to 'afford' our traditional freedoms.

You have to sink way down to a level of hopelessness and desperation to find the book that you can write.

Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.