You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film—and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level—but I don't want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he's missed the point.

Nothing is as dangerous as a sure thing.

The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning.

Some people demand a five-line capsule summary. Something you'd read in a magazine. They want you to say, 'This is the story of the duality of man and the duplicity of governments.' I hear people try to do it -- give the five-line summary -- but if a film has any substance or subtlety, whatever you say is never complete, it's usually wrong, and it's necessarily simplistic: truth is too multifaceted to be contained in a five-line summary. If the work is good, what you say about it is usually irrelevant.

Like the man said, can happiness buy money?

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 don't like doing interviews. There is always the problem of being misquoted or, what's even worse, of being quoted exactly.