We hang here, inquisitive carbon-based life forms, knowing that every atom of carbon now in our bodies was once in the interior of a star. - James Hamilton-Paterson

Nothing is avowed to exist nowadays unless it can be bought or sold or measured by scientists. Why should artists have to acknowledge the complete supremacy of materialism? Must everything mysterious be exploded or all unaccountable things explained away? And if so, what is gained? Plain men drudging in a world of plain things. That's not the world I know and it's one I've no wish to know.

Out of the 65 million men mobilised between 1914 and 1918 by the Allies and the Central Powers combined, it is now generally estimated that some 9 million were killed outright and 21 million wounded. Even allowing for the first-ever air war’s restricted dimensions, the toll it took of flying men was minuscule compared to that of the trenches.

I’m interested in things that are none of my business,
and I’m bored by things that are important to know.” — Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes strip cartoon, 1994)