"Can you believe that lots of people for reasons that are very sound to them enjoy believing that they are helpless in their own films?"

"We are game-playing, fun-having creatures, we are the otters of the universe. We cannot die, we cannot hurt ourselves any more than illusions on the [movie] screen can be hurt. But we can believe we're hurt, in whatever agnonizing detail we want. We can believe we're victims, killed and killing, shuddered around by good luck and bad luck."

"You can hold a reel of film in your hands, and it's all finished an complete - beginning, middle, end are all there that same second, the same millionths of a second. The film exists beyong the time that it records, and if you know what the movie is, you know generally what's going to happen before you walk into the theater: there's going to be battles and excitement, winner and losers, romance, disaster; you know that's all going to be there. But in order to get caught up and swept away in it, in order to enjoy it to its most, you have to put in it in a projector and let it go through the lens minute by minute... any illusion requires spance and time to be experienced. So you pay your nickel and you get your ticket and you settle down and forget what's going on outside the theater and the movie begins for you."

-illusions, robert bach