It's somewhat disquieting that the same parents and educators who are horrified by the notion of child soldiers have bestowed upon 'The Hunger Games' a double mantle of critical praise and global bestsellerdom.

We used to flock to watch gladiators, public torture and executions. In more recent times, our appetite for mortal violence has been sublimated in sports, photorealistic video games, film and literature.

One of the reasons I wrote 'Airborn' was that I'd fallen in love with the great passenger airships which flew in the '20s and '30s. Their time was short-lived. They were frail, they tended to crash; and they could never be as fast, safe and efficient as the airplanes that replaced them.

The more I worked on 'Half Brother,' the more it seemed to me the story was really about love in all its possible forms - how and why we decide to bestow it, or withdraw it; how we decide what is more worthy of being loved, and what is less. We are masters of conditional love.

When I became more involved in music, I had to give up some of my writing in the literary sense. However, on occasion, I would write something for my own pleasure or I would write notes and introductory remarks in the songbooks I put together.

Music has always been a huge passion in my life. I've just had such success with my acting that it's really been right alongside of it, and I've always been writing and playing and singing.

Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction.

The way we work at Pixar is we write the script, but then we quickly move on into story reel, which is basically like a comic-book version of the film. And then we do our own dialogue and music and sound effects, all in an effort to be able to basically sit in the theater and watch the movie before we shoot it, essentially.