It's hard writing screenplays.

I don't get attached to anything. I'm like a good antique dealer. I'm prepared to sell my most valuable table.

When I started the original 'Alien,' Ripley wasn't a woman, it was a guy.

Once, I got slaughtered after 'Blade Runner' by Pauline Kael: three pages of slaughter. I was so offended, I would never read any more press.

I unfortunately do suffer for my art.

I think Phil Dick was particularly interesting in that, first of all, he was a very modern man and a very modern thinker, but I don't know what demons drove him.

What you do, is you gradually become more and more experienced, and more and more realistic about dramatic tolerance, i.e. about how long the play should be.

The whole process of making movies and writing screenplays is visceral and intuitive.

Your landscape in a western is one of the most important characters the film has. The best westerns are about man against his own landscape.

The people who really resurrected 'Blade Runner' was 'MTV.'

If you ever have a kid who doesn't know what to do, stick him in art school. It's amazing what evolves.

I used to agonise over what to do next, but now I'm making a movie a year. It's insane, but it's only a movie after all. You just hang in there, and occasionally you might make something which you can call art... briefly.

Taking a comic strip character is very hard to write. Because comics are meant to work in one page, to work in frames with minimalistic dialogue. And a lot of it is left to the imagination of the reader. To do that in film, you've got to be a little more explanatory. And that requires a good screenplay and good dialogue.

I watched Someone to Watch Over Me the other night. I thought it was a really good movie. It's a great movie.

People have no idea how physically tough doing a film is.

I like Wadi Rum - it's the best view I've ever seen of what could be Mars.

I get so used to working with writers that my prime occupation is development.

There's a big film industry in Egypt, and quite a big one in Syria, and there's a big Muslim community in Paris.

Digital is a different world because you are sitting at home and a hi tech piece of equipment today is within reach of most people, so they are watching a pretty hi tech version of whatever you've done.

Same thing with film, by the time you've finished shooting and you've really been into everything, you've touched up everything in the editing room. You've gone in there and taken little bits from everything.

And anyway, it's only movies. to stop me I think they'll ahve to shoot me in the head.

I was always aware that this whole Earth is on overload.

I was one of those kids who tended to stay in on Saturday nights. My mother used to come and say, 'Why don't you go to the dance with the boys?' And I'm going, 'No, I'm perfectly happy.' I think my parents thought I was definitely weird.

Fire is our first form of technology.