I mean that much more than wiser beings from beyond the stars bringing us enlightenment or death or salvation, we are likely to find ourselves the wisest beings on the scene.

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.

I studied physics at Princeton when I was a college student, and my initial intention was to major in it but to also be a writer. What I discovered, because it was a very high-powered physics program with its own fusion reactor, was that to keep up with my fellow students in that program I would need to dedicate myself to math and physics all the time and let writing go. And I couldn't let writing go, so I let physics go and became a science fan and a storyteller.

I will never probably have the mathematical foundation to truly understand what string theorists are talking about, but it feels good, just for its own sake, to get as close to an understanding as you can.

Making the right choices on the worlds we explore is going to be our biggest challenge.

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.

Once you've written a good script, it will get made or not get made, according to variables you cannot control, like stars getting interested, and the superstitions in Hollywood rising or falling around what is over and done with versus what's in.