If you do not have an absolutely clear vision of something, where you can follow the light to the end of the tunnel, then it doesn't matter whether you're bold or cowardly, or whether you're stupid or intelligent. Doesn't get you anywhere.

The power of a volcano when it erupts is so evident, so visible, so palpable.

I do other sorts of things. I act in other people's movies. I direct operas. I write books.

The punishment itself is something I respectfully disagree with, but for thousands and thousands of years it was practiced everywhere.

Centuries from now our great-great-great-grandchildren will look back at us with amazement at how we could allow such a precious achievement of human culture as the telling of a story to be shattered into smithereens by commercials, the same amazement we feel today when we look at our ancestors for whom slavery, capital punishment, burning of witches, and the inquisition were acceptable everyday events.

Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung fu film.

Nature is monumentally indifferent.