It's impossible to tell you what I'm going to do except to say that I expect to make the best movie ever made.

I will say that the God concept is at the heart of 2001 but not any traditional, anthromorphic image of God. I don't believe in any of Earth's monotheistic religions, but I do believe that one can construct an intriguing scientific definition of God, once you accept the fact that there are approximately 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone, that each star is a life-giving sun and that there are approximately 100 billion galaxies in just the visible universe.

Critical opinion on my films has always been salvaged by what I would call subsequent critical opinion.

The destruction of this planet would have no significance on a cosmic scale: to an observer in the Andromeda nebula, the sign of our extinction would be no more than a match flaring for a second in the heavens: and if that match does blaze in the darkness there will be none to mourn a race that used a power that could have lit a beacon in the stars to light its funeral pyre. The choice is ours.

Know what it is the emotional statement to convey, and use taste and judgement to help the actors give their best possible performance.

A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction.

A filmmaker has almost the same freedom as a novelist has when he buys himself some paper.