For me, there were a few things in the Spider-Man comics that I thought were really interesting. There's this story about Peter's parents and where he came from, and I thought that it was really interesting to explore the emotional consequence of someone whose parents had left them, at a very young age.

Audiences can tell when you're being fake and they will eat you alive. But if you're doing something authentic they will connect to it and that can lead to commercial success.

I just like that dynamic in relationships in movies where they're kind of lovers as rivals, you know?

I think it's really important, when you're redefining a character [ Spider-Man], for the audience to experience things that they haven't experienced, from the ground up. I wanted to build a character. I feel like point of view is a really crucial thing in the story, and that you need to build up the emotional building blocks, so that you can experience all the other emotions in a very specific way, rather than just experiencing it in an intellectual way.

I always remembered that when I saw people get married they got on a rocketship and went to Planet Happiness, Population: Them.

Geeks are running the world, anyone who's seen The Social Network knows the dynamic has shifted, but what I think is iconic and timeless about Peter Parker is that he's an outsider, on the outside looking in, and that was something I thought was very important to protect.

Something you can do in a comic that you can't do in a film is that you can have thought bubbles.