If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success.

I probably spend more time writing than reading science fiction. I find that science-fiction literature is so reactive to all the literature that's gone before that it's sort of like a fractal. It's gone to a level of detail that the average person could not possibly follow unless you're a fan. It iterates upon many prior generations of iterations.

It's really the sense of isolation, more than anything, realizing how tiny you are down in this big vast black unknown and unexplored place.

Failure is an option, fear is not.

But failure has to be an option in art and in exploration - because it's a leap of faith. And no important endeavor that required innovation was done without risk. You have to be willing to take those risks.

Climate change is critical to me because I'm a parent; I feel a sense of responsibility to the future. I'm not going to be around to see its worst effects, which are going to be hitting in the 2030s, '40s, '50s, but my kids will.

Go home, pick up your video camera, and make a film.