Americans born since World War II have grown up in a media-saturated environment. From childhood, we have developed a sort of advertising literacy, which combines appreciation for technique with skepticism about motives. We respond to ads with at least as much rhetorical intelligence as we apply to any other form of persuasion.

Scientists appear most often in horror movies. Through childlike curiosity or God-defying hubris, they unleash destructive forces they can't control - 'Forbidden Planet's Monsters of the Id.

Wars without military objectives have a tendency to go on forever.

Medicare is a monopoly: a central-planning bureaucracy grafted onto American health care. It exercises a stranglehold on the health care of all Americans over 65, and on the medical practices of almost all physicians. Medicare decides what is legitimate and what is not: which prices may be charged and which services may be rendered.

As you continue to work on a show, if I still feel inspired, and I feel they are making exciting choices, then our enthusiasm remains. This is not a perfect science. It's an evolutionary process.

Religion has nothing to do with God. It's a fundamental attitude of human beings, who ask about the origins of life and what happens after death. For many, the answer is a personal god. In my opinion, it's religion that produces God, not the other way round.

Most of the time, when I get an idea that hinges on some science 'thing,' it will have been because of something I read or encountered months or years earlier rather than in the last few days.

Death is like an arrow that is already in flight, and your life lasts only until it reaches you.