" Let's take a positive view. The mountain is an emblem of all the forms of wholesale death: the deluge, the great conflagration (sterminator Vesevo, as the great poet was to say), but also of survival, of human persistence. In this instance, nature run amok also makes culture, makes artifacts, by murdering, petrifying history. In such disasters there is much to appreciate. "

― Susan Sontag , The Volcano Lover