Leo Tolstoy said the purpose of art is to teach you to love life. And that's what I want.

In fact, we've entered a world which is arguably much more dangerous than [being] eyeball to eyeball with the USSR.

Once you decide that you're going to have the death of Spock, then how does that affect the other people? Why is it there? I got a lot of stick from a lot of people from the very beginning about the idea of killing Spock. Somebody said, "You can't kill him." And I said, "Sure you can; the only question is whether you do it well."

Having done, you know, science fiction, I didn't want to get trapped in science fiction. So my eclecticism was my only conscious choice. I didn't want to find myself in a niche that I couldn't get out of.

Art and commerce are not irreconciliable, they are inextricably intertwined.

I'm not really interested in the exploding car or endless sort of dystopian fantasies and superheroes. None of that... that doesn't interest me very much.

I never gave my career much strategic thought. Maybe I should have.