All You Do Is Get

E. Klimov's 'come And See,' About Partisans Fighting The Germans In Byelorussia, Is The Greatest Anti-war Film Ever Made.

In The Past We Have Always Assumed That The External World Around Us Has Represented Reality, However Confusing Or Uncertain, And That The Inner World Of Our Minds, Its Dreams, Hopes, Ambitions, Represented The Realm Of Fantasy, And The Imagination. These Roles, It Seems To Me, Have Been Reversed. The Most Prudent And Effective Method Of Dealing With The World Around Us Is To Assume That It Is A Complete Fiction - Conversely, The One Small Node Of Reality Left To Us Is Inside Of Our Own Heads.

I Don't Think Any Particular Painters Have Inspired Me, Except In A General Sense. It Was More A Matter Of Corroboration. The Visual Arts, From Manet Onwards, Seemed Far More Open To Change And Experiment Than The Novel, Though That's Only Partly The Fault Of The Writers. There's Something About The Novel That Resists Innovation.

It Seems To Me That What Most Of Us Have To Fear For The Future Is Not That Something Terrible Is Going To Happen, But Rather That Nothing Is Going To Happen... I Could Sum Up The Future In One Word, And That Word Is Boring. The Future Is Going To Be Boring.

For The Sake Of My Children And Grandchildren, I Hope That The Human Talent For Self-destruction Can Be Successfully Controlled, Or At Least Channelled Into Productive Forms, But I Doubt It. I Think We Are Moving Into Extremely Volatile And Dangerous Times, As Modern Electronic Technologies Give Mankind Almost Unlimited Powers To Play With Its Own Psychopathology As A Game.