Only a creature that can think symbolically about life can conceive of its own death. Our knowledge of death is part of our knowledge of life.

Ritual is the most primitive reflection of serious thought, a slow deposit, as it were, of people's imaginative insight into life.

Only a creature that can think symbolically about life can conceive of its own death. Our knowledge of death is part of our knowledge of life.

Philosophical questions are not by their nature insoluble. They are, indeed, radically different from scientific questions, because they concern the implications and other interrelations of ideas, not the order of physical events; their answers are interpretations instead of factual reports, and their function is to increase not our knowledge of nature, but our understanding of what we know.

Cinema is like dream.

Is it conceivable that mysticism is a mark of inadequate art?

All persistent practices in art have a creative function. They may serve several ends, but the chief one is the shaping of the work.