Sci-fi films are the epic films of the day because we can no longer put 10 000 extras in the scene - but we can draw thousands of aliens with computers.

Geological change usually takes thousands of years to happen but we are seeing the climate changing not just in our lifetimes but also year by year.

The damage that climate change is causing and that will get worse if we fail to act goes beyond the hundreds of thousands of lives homes and businesses lost ecosystems destroyed species driven to extinction infrastructure smashed and people inconvenienced.

There is no progress whatever. Everything is just the same as it was thousands and tens of thousands of years ago. The outward form changes. The essence does not change.

Extracting oil from the tar sands is a nasty polluting energy-intensive business.

In just the same way the thousands of successive positions of a runner are contracted into one sole symbolic attitude which our eye perceives which art reproduces and which becomes for everyone the image of a man who runs.

It's important to debunk the myths of Africa being this benighted continent civilized only when white people arrived. In fact Africans had been creators of culture for thousands of years before. These were very intelligent subtle and sophisticated people with organized societies and great art.

When science art literature and philosophy are simply the manifestation of personality they are on a level where glorious and dazzling achievements are possible which can make a man's name live for thousands of years.

The beginning of a friendship the fact that two people out of the thousands around them can meet and connect and become friends seems like a kind of magic to me. But maintaining a friendship requires work. I don't mean that as a bad thing. Good art requires work as well.

I remember the first time I felt that I was sharing the stage with someone spectacular was dancing with Beyonce. It was the dancers the band Beyonce and me in front of thousands of people. That was sick. It was pretty amazing that I got to travel the world with someone like her.

I used to think as I looked out on the Hollywood night 'There must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me dreaming of being a movie star.' But I'm not going to worry about them. I'm dreaming the hardest.