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.

If you go to Florence, it has all surface beauty, but like Venice, it's simply a museum of Renaissance times. Los Angeles is raw, uncouth and bizarre, but it's a place of substance. It has more new horizons than any other place.

Public life is constantly aware of the volcano.

Very often, footage that you have shot develops its own dynamic, it's own life, that is totally unexpected, and moves away from you're original intentions. And you have to acknowledge, yes, there is a child growing and developing and moving in a direction that isn't expected-accept it as it is and let it develop its own life.

We haven't seen a real volcanic event at least in 74,000 years - [Mount Toba] in Indonesia, in Sumatra, where the crater itself is 100 kilometers across. It was so monumental, what happened, that for a very long time the entire atmosphere of our planet was darkened. It's not the lava and the heat per se; it's the obscuring of the entire atmosphere, and it made it very difficult for the human race to survive.

A fairly young, intelligent-looking man with long hair asked me whether filming or being filmed could do harm, whether it could destroy a person. In my heart the answer was yes, but I said no.

I'm a very professional man. I'm not out for the experience of adventure.