You want magic to feel real.

I think the greatest danger of the promise of space travel is that it can lead us to be cavalier about the world we live on, if we assume we can find or make more worlds. I think in our lifetimes we surely will not, probably in the lifetimes of our great-great-grand-descendants we will not.

An X-wing fighter flies like an airplane. If you look at the physics, it's actually quite impossible.

You need a human story to intersect those points of interest with real stakes on the line, and then things start to be fun, where you can see the ramifications, you see the impact on people's lives of big changes - like taking a man of science, like a surgeon, and robbing him of his understanding of the universe and forcing him into a newer and wider understanding.

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.

Directing offers you the hope that your vision will reach the screen, unmolested and intact. Therefore, it's tantalizing to all writers.

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.