Youth fare aside, I have generally always been interested in what's going on culturally.

I can't imagine voluntarily standing beside an F1 track in the rain, watching motorised wedges plastered in corporate decals zooming past at 500mph.

I have often felt the worlds of social media and the Internet are like a weird dreamscape. Even physically, when you are looking at your phone, you are out of it.

Calling Batman 'the Dark Knight' is like calling Papa Smurf 'the Blue Patriarch':you're not fooling anyone.

If you take 2001: A Space Odyssey as an example of somebody who creates a new language in film by what he was able to accomplish with art direction, photography, lighting, etc., it is still a gold standard for science fiction.

The density of settlement of economists over the whole empire of economic science is very uneven, with a few areas of modest size holding the bulk of the population.

I landed a job with Roger Corman. The job was to write the English dialogue for a Russian science fiction picture. I didn't speak any Russian. He didn't care whether I could understand what they were saying; he wanted me to make up dialogue.

My most amazing discovery was becoming a mother. It changed everything. I can't imagine my life without these little beings.