“All I know is that I've made some big screw-ups, and I've done some things that have done all right. I just keep trying to learn from the mistakes I've made.”

“All the times I've been lucky enough to be a part of a show that's actually gotten on the air, it's always that same mixture of excitement and utter fear.”

“As a director/writer/producer, all you ever want is to work with actors who make you look better, who make the work you do seem as good as it can be and even better than it is.”

“As a kid, 'Star Wars' was much more my thing than 'Star Trek' was.”

“I am lucky, I'm the first to admit that.”

“I believe in anything that will engage the audience and make the story more effective.”

“I don't think I have a signature.”

“I don't try and write strong female characters or strong male characters, I just try and write, hopefully, strong characters and sometimes they happen to be female.”

“I hate to look at the stuff I've written and consider what it means or why I do it.”

“I have no style. There are certain people who just have a visual sense that defines their work. You could probably watch 30 seconds of anything they do and you'll know exactly who directed it. I don't have that skill.”

“I hope to make movies that are so small they don't need to make anything to be profitable.”

“I love movies with spectacle but spectacle can be a performance, it doesn't have to be a creature.”

“I love recording music.”

“I love the idea of anthropomorphizing machines. I love the idea of taking technology and giving it a personality.”

“I love working with the right actor, and if the right actor happens to be unknown, that should be allowed, too, I think.”

“I think that even if you're wondering if two characters are ever going to kiss, drawing out the inevitability is part of the fun. Whatever the genre happens to be.”

“I think you have a passion and an obsession for something when it's not necessarily ubiquitous.”

“I try to push ideas away, and the ones that will not leave me alone are the ones that ultimately end up happening.”

“I was never really a comic-book fanatic.”

“I work with really hard-working people who are really good at what they do.”

“I'm a fast writer.”

“I'm not trying to be coy or manipulative or Machiavellian, I want to spark people's imaginations.”

“I'm obsessed with things that are distinctly analogue.”

“It's a leap of faith doing any serialised storytelling.”

“I've had the same friends since I was in kindergarten.”

“Making movies was more a reaction to not being chosen for sports. Other kids were out there playing at whatever; I was off making something blow up and filming it, or making a mould of my sister's head using alginating plaster.”

“My mother is the coolest, most amazing person I know.”

“Obviously with the Internet and increased access to other means of watching shows, the audience has dispersed and is all over the place and that is a challenge.”

“One of my favorite things about 'Star Trek' wasn't just the overt banter but the humor in that show about the relationships between the main characters and their reactions to the situations they would face; there was a lot of comedy in that show without ever breaking its reality.”

“People never know what they want, though everyone says they do. If they did, nobody would ever be surprised.”

“Pitching is always a weird, difficult thing.”

“Ratings have changed, viewer habits have changed and the options for the audience have grown enormously, but I don't think how you tell a story is fundamentally different.”

“Robotics are beginning to cross that line from absolutely primitive motion to motion that resembles animal or human behavior.”

“'Star Trek' was always a little bit closed emotionally. I never connected to the characters.”

“Stories in which the destruction of society occurs are explorations of social fears and issues that filmmakers, novelists, playwrights, painters have been examining for a long time.”

“The ability of a television series to make adjustments is something you've got to take advantage of.”

“The goal is always to do B material in an A fashion.”

“The Internet now provides an immediate and very clear consensus of what it is that the audience is experiencing. It's something that you should never let lead you, and yet at the same time, you should never ignore it.”

“To me the interesting main character is never the one without flaws.”

“We're living at a time where if you do a Google search for a 'show, review and network,' you'll get 'The New York Times' and Pete Billingsley from a town you've never heard of on the same results page. It's kind of democratizing the process so that everyone has access to a distribution system to express themselves.”

“What I'm still grappling with and learning how to do is to be looking and thinking cinematically, having come from television.”

“What's a bigger mystery box than a movie theater? You go to the theater, you're just so excited to see anything - the moment the lights go down is often the best part.”

“When I was a kid, among the other embarrassing things I would do, and there's a list of stupid things, but I would make these dumb comedy tapes. I would often make prank phone calls, but I would also do it with friends.”

“When I was a kid, it was a huge insult to be a geek. Now it's a point of pride in a weird way.”

“When I was a little kid - and even still - I loved magic tricks. When I saw how movies got made - at least had a glimpse when I went on the Universal Studios tour with my grandfather, I remember feeling like this was another means by which I could do magic.”

“When there's an authentic mystery, as opposed to just a question being asked, that's what makes you lean forward.”

“When you work on something that combines both the spectacular and the relatable, the hyperreal and the real, it suddenly can become supernatural. The hypothetical and the theoretical can become literal.”

“Whenever a toddler sees a pile of blocks, he wants to tear it down.”

“Whenever I've directed something, there's this feeling of demand and focus that I like.”

“With three kids you are just trying to survive. You can't be fastidious.”

“You can never guess or assume what anyone is going to think.”

“You never want to have that ticking clock and know that you had all this time and didn't use it.”