“When L.A.s schizophrenia between Dreamland and Utopia was becoming socially manifest, the United States, which was always a place, went to war with America, which was always an idea.”

“When he placed a candle on the shelf across the room from him and lit its wick, he came to realize that in fact everything he saw was a flat surface, like a screen that in fact dimension was an il...”

“Can anything be less cool than defending the motion picture academy?”

“Redford always has been a cool presence both before and behind the camera. His best movie as a filmmaker, 1994's 'Quiz Show,' exhibits a classicism verging on self-repression, and the social indign...”

“Nothing manifests more persuasively the American contradiction than that the author of the Declaration of Independence, a slave owner, wrote an antislavery clause into the document - as if to compe...”

“Before movies, memory unspooled differently in the mind, trailing off in dust-blasted fade-out rather than spliced-together flashback; before photography, memory rippled like a reflection on water'...”

“Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.”

“So he tasted the deep pain that is reserved only for the strong, just as he had tasted for a little while the deep happiness.”

“The splendid thingabout falling apartsilently...is thatyou can start overas many timesas you like.”

“When you expect the world to end at any moment, you know there is no need to hurry. You take your time, you do your work well.”

“If it happens that the human race doesn't make it, then the fact that we were here once will not be altered, that once upon a time we peopled this astonishing blue planet, and wondered intelligentl...”

“I like living in my head because in there, everyone is kind and innocent. Once you start integrating yourself into the world, you realize that people are nasty, mean creatures. They're worse than z...”

“It is in our genes to understand the universe if we can, to keep trying even if we cannot, and to be enchanted by the act of learning all the way.”