The more you learn about the real vastness of space and the real challenges of space travel, the more completely you appreciate the necessity of taking very good care of this world and being good stewards of it.

The reality of space travel I think is somewhere in the middle. We will get there, it will be hard, it will take a long time, and in the end, the most extraordinary thing we will find when we get there will be ourselves.

The multiverse as a real physical construct within physics overlapping with a more mystical understanding of many possible worlds - the notion of there being a root down at the quantum level between intention and reality, between consciousness and existence - it's not a matter of trying to explain the mystery of magic away with a pat mechanism of a pseudoscience, it's just a matter of trying to ground it in a domain.

The science fiction I write comes from a pretty deep pool of literature, not just from the reflection of other science fiction films, and I think that gives me somewhat deeper roots.

I would say that working with Ridley Scott makes the process of directing much more terrifying.

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.

A lot of screenwriters have a drawer of unsold scripts that they cut their teeth on. I don't have one. Everything I've written, after my first spec, I wrote on assignment. Everything I've written was work.