I don't fly by the seat of my pants. I set strategies, and then I pursue those in unrelenting fashion.

What I worry about the most is the competition for young eyeballs. We have so many other competing forms of media. I don't take any audience members for granted.

I do think we're in a period of time culturally where there is just this extraordinary connection that we have to our pets, and in many ways, they are displacing kids. They're so much simpler than dealing with a kid because of this unconditional love that does not get complicated by adolescence or any other manipulation.

Embrace risk. The driving force behind our economic model at Illumination Mac Guff is designed to preserve the opportunity to take risk. Subvert the expectation of the audience. Surprise them with unexpected choices.

Frankenstein' did not invent the fear of science; the novel found its audience because it dramatized anxieties that already existed. Although popular entertainment can, over the long run, shape public perceptions, it becomes popular in the first place only if it addresses preexisting hopes, fears, and fascinations.

I would say the connection between art and science is very tenuous for me. It's just that I'm interested in both. I don't think that my interest in art affects the kind of science that I do.

Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.

I have the idea that running shoes are based on a kind of cult idea - that our feet are flawed and we need shoes to correct those flaws. The shoe companies are in the business of selling shoes. But there's no evidence from running shoe manufacturers that they're right. There's no scientific data that running shoes reduce injury.