If you circle above Central Park at night in a helicopter, you're looking down at the most expensive real estate in the world. It's the American Monopoly board.

There are some moments that are pretty distressing in 'Prometheus.' In fact, the last hour is pretty distressing.

'Alien' is a C film elevated to an A film, honestly, by it being well done and a great monster. If it hadn't had that great monster, even with a wonderful cast, it wouldn't have been as good, I don't think.

I've gradually realised that what I do best is universes. And I shouldn't be afraid of that.

We can't terraform yet, but we know it exists.

I'm a very practical person.

I am in a constant stage of development.

I grew up in the North of England at a time when Stirling Moss was a hero. Everyone wanted to be a racing driver.

The time it would take me to write a screenplay it would take me the time to make two films. I would rather make the movies, and I'm a better moviemaker than I would be writer.

Stanley Kubrick's '2001' was the door that opened up the possibility of science fiction for me. Everything else up to then was fine, but didn't quite work for me.

A word on 'Kingdom of Heaven:' if you get the four-disc set, which is 3 hr. 8 min., you'll see why it's such a good movie. It was a real passion project, and it's the film I'm most proud of. I think it was treated incredibly unfairly.

The best stories come out of the truth.

If you go back and look, a completely underrated film is 'Quest for Fire.' That was one of the most genius, simplistic but incredibly sophisticated notion of what it was. The evolution of that was just fantastic.

I've got many letters from Muslim organizations thanking me for making 'Kingdom of Heaven.'

I've seen some of James Cameron's work, and I've got to go 3D.

Blade Runner appears regularly, two or three times a year in various shapes and forms of science fiction. It set the pace for what is essentially urban science fiction, urban future and it's why I've never re-visited that area because I feel I've done it.

If somebody's given me X amount of dollars to fulfill a dream, they've got every right to actually say something about it.

I am a science fiction enthusiast, really, deep down.

Conscience, the power of conscience, can unearth all kinds of things.

MPC, Moving Picture Company, they're really excellent, they did the majority of the effects.

I try to make films, not movies. I've never liked the expression 'movie', but it sounds elitist to say that.

I would make a film with a political point of view if I agreed with it, and even, perhaps, if I didn't.

For 'Prometheus,' I came back to a very simple question that haunted me that appears in the first 'Alien,' and no one answered in subsequent Alien films: who was the 'Space Jockey' - the big guy in the seat? If you really go into that, it becomes the basis for a pretty interesting story.

I want a certificate that allows me to make as big a box office as possible.

I'm an Englishman who did a film on Mogadishu, 'Black Hawk Down.'

If studios don't get their money back, we don't have any movies. So it is important that films are successful, and I am fully supportive of that because I'm not just a director, I'm also not stupid. I've been in this business long enough and, to a certain extent, I'm a businessman; I know the importance of that.

The U.K. has to keep investing in new technology, skills, and infrastructure to keep pace with international competition.

I come out of TV. I come out of live television, BBC drama: that's where I started first as a designer, then a director. Then I went independent TV, then television advertising.

One of the problems with science fiction, which is probably one of the reasons why I haven't done one for many, many years, is the fact that everything is used up. Every type of spacesuit is used up, every type of spacecraft is vaguely familiar, the corridors are similar, and the planets are similar.

Good FBI officers are not noticeable. You would never look at them.

It's everything and I always make decisions about the cast.

The 3D world allows you to engage even more with a film because you're somehow drawn into the landscape or the universe of that scene. Even when it's two people talking at a table, you feel like you're a third party.

Politics is very interesting and always leads to conflict.

I think if I'm going to do a science fiction, I'm going to go down a new path that I want to do.

'The Duellists' won Cannes, but Paramount didn't know how to release a film about two guys in bizarre breeches, waving swords around. I actually think it's a pretty good Western.

Sacred texts give no specific depiction of God, so for centuries, artists and filmmakers have had to choose their own visual depiction.

I'm a reader. I found out that, whether you're a studio head or a director, you must read your own material. You can't rely on readers.

Sometimes, scenes are great without any music at all.

Business fascinates me. It's very creative.

I'm used to very strong women because my mother was particularly strong, and my father was away all the time. My mother was a big part of bringing up three boys, so I was fully versed in the strength of a powerful woman, and accepted that as the status quo.

I do a pretty good job at casting actually.

Cast is everything.

Scaring someone's the hardest thing to do, and that's why most of these scary movies are not scary. They're sick, but not scary. There's a lot of sickness out there, of people who then sit there and watch it, which I think is absolutely dismaying.

I'm really intrigued by those eternal questions of creation and belief and faith. I don't care who you are, it's what we all think about. It's in the back of all our minds.

Technology continues to bring us wondrous advances in filmmaking to improve how we view movies.

The ego is there, but I'm learning to channel it.

The Gulf of Mexico, they believe, is a huge asteroid. That was an impact zone, you know that? Yeah, for that big a thing to actually hit our globe, it would have had to adjusted the spin, the axis.

I was always amazed about how much I could finally squeeze into a thirty second commercial.

Sometimes I find I'm wearing a divided, split brain in terms of drama and humor.

Technology will need to make many more huge leaps before one can ever view films with the level of picture and sound quality many film lovers demand without having to slide a disc into a player, especially with the technical requirements of today's 3D movies.