When I was a kid growing up in the '80s, the BBC showed those old Buster Crabbe serials like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. So instead of ponderous sci-fi or depressing sci-fi or dystopian sci-fi and all the things we're kind of used to, where it's always raining and it's always dark, I thought, "Wouldn't it be nice to do something that was just fun and absolutely nonstop?" Like, I love writing action, and this thing is that. It's all action.

I wanted to portray very, very dark subject matter and a deceptively complex story in the brightest colours and simplest lines possible to leave the readers reeling.

One of the things that made Star Wars work was the kids didn't know who their dad was.

If you feel the need to make everyone happy, you should be a wedding planner not a leader.

The highest form of leadership is one in which a leader raises up other leaders - not as an accident, but as a result of conscious effort.

Guess that's thirty-one pieces of silver you've got now, huh? Sleep well, Judas.

She was like John Rambo meets Polly Pocket; Dakota Fanning crossed with Death Wish 4.