We are just a blip. I found it very interesting when Clive [Oppenheimer] interviewed the Ethiopian scientists and asked them, "Do we have another 100,000 years?" In their calculation, mankind will be entering a very critical phrase a thousand years from now.

Only the poets can hold the country together, and I wanted to hold Germany together.

Nature is monumentally indifferent.

There are certainly laws and elements that make a film more accessible to mainstream audiences. If you've got Tom Cruise as a strongman, I'm sure it would have larger audiences, but it wouldn't have the same substance.

We have volcanoes also in our immediate neighborhood. I wish we didn't have to travel that far. Probably the kind of magnitude and awesome raw power of them is very fascinating, and of course it's very cinematic.

I wouldn't like to travel at all. I've been too much around.

I love nature but against my better judgment.