Because it's in and about New York City, I knew 'Ex Machina' was going to have to continually mix the mundane and the fantastic.

That was the appealing thing about comics: There literally is no budget in comics. You're only limited by your imagination.

I think some people are just very passionate that things remain the way they were when they were kids.

We're always looking roughly 30 years behind us. In the '80s they were obsessed with the '50s and so on.

The longer I've been writing scripts, the more I find that you have to give the artist more leeway or else you'll just be disappointed. You can't force them to draw every image that's in your head. Since I'm a horrific artist, I wouldn't want them to anyway. So I definitely give them a lot more leeway now than I did at the beginning.

I mean, do you know what you get when you call a suicide hotline in New York city? A busy signal. Literally.

When a man carries an instrument of violence, he'll always find the justification to use it.