And anyway, it's only movies. to stop me I think they'll ahve to shoot me in the head.

Same thing with film, by the time you've finished shooting and you've really been into everything, you've touched up everything in the editing room. You've gone in there and taken little bits from everything.

Digital is a different world because you are sitting at home and a hi tech piece of equipment today is within reach of most people, so they are watching a pretty hi tech version of whatever you've done.

There's a big film industry in Egypt, and quite a big one in Syria, and there's a big Muslim community in Paris.

I get so used to working with writers that my prime occupation is development.

I like Wadi Rum - it's the best view I've ever seen of what could be Mars.

People have no idea how physically tough doing a film is.

I watched Someone to Watch Over Me the other night. I thought it was a really good movie. It's a great movie.

Taking a comic strip character is very hard to write. Because comics are meant to work in one page, to work in frames with minimalistic dialogue. And a lot of it is left to the imagination of the reader. To do that in film, you've got to be a little more explanatory. And that requires a good screenplay and good dialogue.

I used to agonise over what to do next, but now I'm making a movie a year. It's insane, but it's only a movie after all. You just hang in there, and occasionally you might make something which you can call art... briefly.

If you ever have a kid who doesn't know what to do, stick him in art school. It's amazing what evolves.

The people who really resurrected 'Blade Runner' was 'MTV.'

Your landscape in a western is one of the most important characters the film has. The best westerns are about man against his own landscape.

The whole process of making movies and writing screenplays is visceral and intuitive.

What you do, is you gradually become more and more experienced, and more and more realistic about dramatic tolerance, i.e. about how long the play should be.

I think Phil Dick was particularly interesting in that, first of all, he was a very modern man and a very modern thinker, but I don't know what demons drove him.

I unfortunately do suffer for my art.

Once, I got slaughtered after 'Blade Runner' by Pauline Kael: three pages of slaughter. I was so offended, I would never read any more press.

When I started the original 'Alien,' Ripley wasn't a woman, it was a guy.

I don't get attached to anything. I'm like a good antique dealer. I'm prepared to sell my most valuable table.

It's hard writing screenplays.

The key thing is you can be the only person, your own critic.

I'll reshoot a corridor 13 different ways, and you'll never recognise them.

If you circle above Central Park at night in a helicopter, you're looking down at the most expensive real estate in the world. It's the American Monopoly board.

There are some moments that are pretty distressing in 'Prometheus.' In fact, the last hour is pretty distressing.

'Alien' is a C film elevated to an A film, honestly, by it being well done and a great monster. If it hadn't had that great monster, even with a wonderful cast, it wouldn't have been as good, I don't think.

I've gradually realised that what I do best is universes. And I shouldn't be afraid of that.

We can't terraform yet, but we know it exists.

I'm a very practical person.

I am in a constant stage of development.

I grew up in the North of England at a time when Stirling Moss was a hero. Everyone wanted to be a racing driver.

The time it would take me to write a screenplay it would take me the time to make two films. I would rather make the movies, and I'm a better moviemaker than I would be writer.

Stanley Kubrick's '2001' was the door that opened up the possibility of science fiction for me. Everything else up to then was fine, but didn't quite work for me.

A word on 'Kingdom of Heaven:' if you get the four-disc set, which is 3 hr. 8 min., you'll see why it's such a good movie. It was a real passion project, and it's the film I'm most proud of. I think it was treated incredibly unfairly.

The best stories come out of the truth.

If you go back and look, a completely underrated film is 'Quest for Fire.' That was one of the most genius, simplistic but incredibly sophisticated notion of what it was. The evolution of that was just fantastic.

I've got many letters from Muslim organizations thanking me for making 'Kingdom of Heaven.'

I've seen some of James Cameron's work, and I've got to go 3D.

Blade Runner appears regularly, two or three times a year in various shapes and forms of science fiction. It set the pace for what is essentially urban science fiction, urban future and it's why I've never re-visited that area because I feel I've done it.

If somebody's given me X amount of dollars to fulfill a dream, they've got every right to actually say something about it.

I am a science fiction enthusiast, really, deep down.

Conscience, the power of conscience, can unearth all kinds of things.

MPC, Moving Picture Company, they're really excellent, they did the majority of the effects.

I try to make films, not movies. I've never liked the expression 'movie', but it sounds elitist to say that.

I would make a film with a political point of view if I agreed with it, and even, perhaps, if I didn't.

For 'Prometheus,' I came back to a very simple question that haunted me that appears in the first 'Alien,' and no one answered in subsequent Alien films: who was the 'Space Jockey' - the big guy in the seat? If you really go into that, it becomes the basis for a pretty interesting story.

I want a certificate that allows me to make as big a box office as possible.

I'm an Englishman who did a film on Mogadishu, 'Black Hawk Down.'

If studios don't get their money back, we don't have any movies. So it is important that films are successful, and I am fully supportive of that because I'm not just a director, I'm also not stupid. I've been in this business long enough and, to a certain extent, I'm a businessman; I know the importance of that.

The U.K. has to keep investing in new technology, skills, and infrastructure to keep pace with international competition.