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.

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.

It also is true that some ideas naturally work themselves out over a longer period of time than a single human life can encompass.

I don't really like movies that are all one or the other. It's really about the play between both of them. Now that I've said that, there's actually lots of movies that I like that are one or the other but it's just not for me as a filmmaker.

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.

[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.