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.

This climate surrounding me has reached Clive Oppenheimer. In practical terms he sees that I'm not interested in any sort of daredevil stunts, I'm just interested in the work. And he's convinced that I'm clinically sane.

The wonderful thing is that Clive [Oppenheimer ] insisted on training his camera - his private camera - on me at one point. We were discussing things such as how to avoid certain dangers, while reflecting on a volcano that had threatened to explode 40 years ago.

Sometimes bad luck hits you like in an ancient Greek tragedy, and it's not your own making. When you have a plane crash, it's not your fault.

Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.

It's curiosity, and always a sense of poetry. You see it in particular in the chapter "Iceland" where I'm reciting ancient Icelandic poetry. It has this very beautiful gravitas in conjunction with the volcanoes.

It seems odd, but people who see my films normally take them in in a deeper way than you would actually watch a film, let's say The Terminator or whatever.