So much of literary sci-fi is about creating worlds that are rich and detailed and make sense at a social level. We'll create a world for people and then later present a narrative in that world.

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

I tend to like strong female characters. It just interests me dramatically. A strong male character isn't interesting because it has been done and it's so cliched. A weak male character is interesting: somebody else hasn't done it a hundred times. A strong female character is still interesting to me because it hasn't been done all that much, finding the balance of femininity and strength. [From a 1986 Fangoria interview]

Every time my cameras go out on a movie, we learn something new and then we take what we learn and we put it into the next generation of the cameras so we're constantly improving. It's kind of like building a race car, racing it, then running back to the shop and working on the engine some more and tinkering with it to improve it.

If it was up to the studio, everything would be shot with a camcorder.

Nature's not our enemy, it's our sustenance; and we need it - and we need nature healthy for us to be healthy and to survive long term

I do an awful lot of scuba diving. I love to be on the ocean, under the ocean. I live next to the ocean.