You want the mystical understanding of the cosmos to feel compatible with a scientific understanding of the cosmos, like it extends our understanding rather than unwriting it.

When a new writer comes onto a project, he'll make wholesale changes just to mark the territory or for greater credit.

I never stopped loving the deeper sciences, and I read as deeply into lay science as I can.

I try to keep up, and the scientific perspective is always part of my creative approach.

I'd wanted to be a writer since I was knee-high. Once I knew that books were written by people and didn't just happen, it was obviously that I would write them, too.

Directing offers you the hope that your vision will reach the screen, unmolested and intact. Therefore, it's tantalizing to all writers.

It is true that, with TV, a writer gets a great deal more respect.

For a successful writer, the secret is to have many irons in the fire. Write the next thing.

You don't control whether your movies get made. You can't. All you can control is whether your draft is great. So, you write your great draft, as best as you can, and then move on to the next thing.

Making the right choices on the worlds we explore is going to be our biggest challenge.

I mean that much more than wiser beings from beyond the stars bringing us enlightenment or death or salvation, we are likely to find ourselves the wisest beings on the scene.

There is only one reality, but there are many ways that reality can be interpreted.

We're both cat lovers [with Marilyn Manson].

I try to get through emotional pain and not go around it, it always ends sooner that way. I also use chocolate.

I've sort of remarried a few years ago and have had a couple more children in the last couple of years. And so home life is taking up a lot of my time.

The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps... so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in.

[Human beings] will begin to recover the moment we take art as seriously as physics, chemistry or money.

We believe in one God. We believe Muhammad is the Apostle of God.

Who would have known of Hector, if Troy had been happy? The road to valor is built by adversity.

Nothin' taken for granted, just learn from my mistakes. My will too strong, my spirit's somethin' they can't take.

Why wait to be memorable?