Some of the most exciting moments in 'Star Wars' are when you're cutting between stories and you're building this momentum.
Like, you think, 'Oh, it's 'Star Wars,' everybody has a spaceship' - but no, actually, in the 'Star Wars' universe, having a ship is like having a yacht.
One of the beautiful things about being a part of 'Star Wars' is that it's one of those few things that are community-building in that way. Maybe that way of putting it is a little self-important. But it is something we all have a connection to, something everybody knows about. There aren't that many of those things.
One thing that you kind of know about the 'Star Wars' universe, but that you learn in a much more impactful way as you get into it, is that living in that universe is hard.
I believe in mysticism, with an interior goal, and you are your own temple and your own priest. I don't believe anymore in religions, because you see today there are religious wars, prejudice, false morals, and the woman is despised. Religion is too old now; it's from another century, it's not for today.
And it says something about our level of disassociation, that we can provoke these wars abroad but we're not allowed to see people get killed as a result.
It's hard to stop wars, and it's hard to stop the abuse of the planet and all of those things. I guess you just do what you can do and voice your concern.
CNN will always be the channel people turn on when wars and horrible disasters happen. The 'trick' is getting people to also want to watch it when there aren't hundreds or thousands of people somewhere in the world currently in mortal peril.
According to the U.N., more than 2.7 billion people will face severe water shortages by 2025. Many social scientists predict that the next big wars will be over water. Nevertheless, the average American family blissfully consumes 300 gallons a day, when you add in watering the lawn and washing dishes, clothes, and cars.
Historical fiction was not - and is not - meant to supplant literature from the period it describes. As a veteran of the Crimea, Tolstoy wrote 'War and Peace' to match his own internal sense of the truth of the Napoleonic wars, to dramatize what he felt literature from that period had failed to describe.
