I always like to think that I make movies that are like Nirvana songs. They have a slow verse and then they pop into high gear and then they go back into slow and then they pop into high gear again.

The writer's genetic inheritance and her or his experiences shape the writer into a unique individual, and it is this uniqueness that is the writer's only stuff for sale.

One should be willing to throw away a dozen ideas to come up with a good one, just as one should throw away a dozen words to come up with the right one.

I hope I'm still alive to see an expedition set off for Mars.

Thinking that everything is going to come together in a perfect way is not necessarily the way it's going to happen.

God giving man life and taking it away is not nearly so bad as God taking away childhood and giving him life.

[T]he one indispensable ingredient of science fiction [is] a belief in a world being changed by man's intellect, a conviction that what was being written could really happen.

I like to plan everything out and know exactly what we're doing. It's always important to me to work with a cast and a crew that not only I respect their talent but I really like them as people.

The people who gave up their humanity to save their planet was always very interesting to me.

In science fiction a fantastic event or development is considered rationally.

I don't really think in terms of competing with myself.

Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep.

Whenever I feel like I'm getting too far away from where I need to be, I think about my sons and the legacy I have to leave for them - and it always brings me back to reality.

Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions.

I'm interested in genius the way a hungry man is interested in Philadelphia cheesesteaks. I want something. I want a piece of it.

I think as English people, we don't want to be reminded that at one point we ruled three-quarters of the globe, and now we're a very small country that doesn't own three-quarters of the globe.

Each generation must get on the same old merry-go-round, only disguised in a fresh coat of paint.

I am dying of hunger.

Writing gets easier once you know your allies and banish your enemies.

Love is nothing other than finding the truth.

The supreme bliss that pulsates in the wake of meditation is your pure essence.