With more people, there are more voices to tune out.

I belong rather to a more classical tradition of social analysis.

Books are not only the arbitrary sum of our dreams, and our memory. They also give us the model of self-transcende nce.

As objects of contemplation, images of the atrocious can answer to several different needs. To steel oneself against weakness. To make oneself more numb. To acknowledge the existence of the incorrigible.

If an irreducible distinction between theatre and cinema does exist, it may be this: Theatre is confined to a logical or continuous use of space. Cinemahas access to an alogical or discontinuous use of space.

A good listener: a physical presence that is warm, alert, intelligent - more important than any words.

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.