I actually started as a model builder and quickly progressed into production design, which made sense because I could draw and paint. But I kept watching that guy over there who was moving the actors around and setting up the shots.

You have to not listen to the nay sayers because there will be many and often they'll be much more qualified than you and cause you to sort of doubt yourself.

The magic doesn't come from within the director's mind, it comes from within the hearts of the actors.

I lived in a small town. It was 2,000 people in Canada. A little river that went through it and we swam in the - you know, there was a lot of water around. Niagara Falls was about four or five miles away.

What are you gonna do, talk the alien to death?

So much of literary sci-fi is about creating worlds that are rich and detailed and make sense at a social level. We'll create a world for people and then later present a narrative in that world.

I had pictured myself as a filmmaker but I had never pictured myself as a director if that makes any sense at all.

It'll be all of our efforts together. It won't won't ever be exactly the way I imagined it. And that is, I think, an important lesson as well, is that in any group enterprise it's going to be the sum total of the group.

The film industry is about saying 'no' to people, and inherently you cannot take 'no' for an answer.

There are many talented people who haven't fulfilled their dreams because they over thought it, or they were too cautious, and were unwilling to make the leap of faith.

You know, in the film making business no one ever gives you anything.

I do an awful lot of scuba diving. I love to be on the ocean, under the ocean. I live next to the ocean.

I was always fascinated by engineering. Maybe it was an attempt maybe to get my father's respect or interest, or maybe it was just a genetic love of technology, but I was always trying to build things.

I actually started as a model builder and quickly progressed into production design, which made sense because I could draw and paint. But I kept watching that guy over there who was moving the actors around and setting up the shots.

Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you're a director. Everything after that you're just negotiating your budget and your fee.

It took me a long time to realize that you have to have a bit of an interlanguage with actors. You have to give them something that they can act with.

I like the evening in India, the one magic moment when the sun balances on the rim of the world, and the hush descends, and ten thousand civil servants drift homeward on a river of bicycles, brooding on the Lord Krishna and the cost of living.

The films that influenced me were so disparate that there's almost no pattern.

I watched a couple of really bad directors work, and I saw how they completely botched it up and missed the visual opportunities of the scene when we had put things in front of them as opportunities. Set pieces, props and so on.

There is a hugely underserved population out there... those who are the least capable of paying pay the highest.

I blame it on Walt Disney, where animals are given human qualities. People don't understand that a wild animal is not something that is nice to pat. It can seriously harm you.

My mother was a housewife but she was also an artist. My father was an electrical engineer.

I love short trips to New York; to me it is the finest three-day town on earth.

I certainly didn't think of myself as gifted. The standards for being gifted in my environment were if you were good in Little League or if you were good in football.

If you wait until the right time to have a child you'll die childless, and I think film making is very much the same thing. You just have to take the plunge and just start shooting something even if it's bad.

I mean, you have to be able - you have to have made the commitment within yourself to do whatever it takes to get the job done and to try to inspire other people to do it, because obviously the first rule is you can't do it by yourself.

I had read tons of science fiction. I was fascinated by other worlds, other environments. For me, it was fantasy, but it was not fantasy in the sense of pure escapism.

Every time you dive, you hope you'll see something new - some new species. Sometimes the ocean gives you a gift, sometimes it doesn't.

I don't use film cameras. I don't do visual effects the same way. We don't use miniature models; it's all CG now, creating worlds in CG. It's a completely different toolset. But the rules of storytelling are the same.

I try to live with honor, even if it costs me millions of dollars and takes a long time. It's very unusual in Hollywood. Few people are trustworthy - a handshake means nothing to them. They feel they're required to keep an agreement with you only if you're successful or they need you.

I'm a storyteller; that's what exploration really is all about. Going to places where others haven't been and returning to tell a story they haven't heard before.

I'm hopeful that we'll be able to study the ocean before we destroy it.

If you set your goals ridiculously high and it's a failure, you will fail above everyone else's success.

Inspiration can hit you in the head at any time in any context. It could happen in a conversation. Talking to someone at a party, you can get an idea. But you've got to remember those inspirations.

Nature's imagination is so boundless compared to our own meager human imagination.

People call me a perfectionist, but I'm not. I'm a rightist. I do something until it's right, and then I move on to the next thing.

Storytelling is storytelling. You still play by the same narrative rules. The technology is completely different. I don't use one piece of technology that I used when I started directing.

The snake kills by squeezing very slowly. This is how the civilized world slowly, slowly pushes into the forest and takes away the world that used to be.

To convince people to back your idea, you've got to sell it to yourself and know when it's the moment. Sometimes that means waiting. It's like surfing. You don't create energy, you just harvest energy already out there.

Hope is not a strategy. Luck is not a factor. Fear is not an option.

If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.

When you have the feeling that anything's possible, sometimes you wind up acting on it.

The new world will be a place of answers and no questions because the only questions left will be answered by computers because only computers will know what to ask.

But failure has to be an option in art and in exploration because it's a leap of faith. And no important endeavor that required innovation was done without risk. You have to be willing to take those risks.

Pain can be controlled, you just disconnect it.

The nation that leads in renewable energy will be the nation that leads the world.

Actors love mental disorders, dialects, and corsets. Give them one of the three and they're happy.

What's fascinating is that when you write a script, it's almost a stream of consciousness. You have an idea that it means something, but you're not always sure what. Then when you get on the set, the actors teach you.

Young actors often don't think of the consequences of doing nudity or sex scenes. They want the role so badly that they agree to be exploited, and then end up embarrassing family, friends, and even strangers.