I don't think through anything I do. I just do it, and it's oftentimes landed me in huge amounts of trouble.

I hope I'm still alive to see an expedition set off for Mars.

I am loath to suggest 'Visitor Q' to anyone, because you've got to have a warped brain to even understand or appreciate it a little bit. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I have been blessed with a warped brain, and I really dug it.

I'm a huge Howard the Duck fan. For people who don't know, I'm a huge Marvel Comics fan, but Howard the Duck was maybe my favorite character as a kid. I went back, and I collected all of those comics. I had every comic he was ever in.

I wrote a 20-page document, before I was ever hired, on exactly how the visuals of 'Guardians of the Galaxy' would be approached, how we'd look at creating a new type of space epic. That's exactly what the movie is today - absolutely everybody has adhered to that original document.

I like the Nova Corps; I just don't like Nova that much! He's okay, you know? I just don't like that helmet!

Honest to God, for me, I've never been a guy to stack projects. A lot of these other guys, they like to do this and then line up what they're doing next and line up what they're doing next. I just can't do it.

My life isn't just one genre. It's a romance one minute, an action movie the next - it's actually rarely, rarely an action film, to be frank.

I've always believed in the power of rational thinking and behavior as the savior of the world, and science fiction as a powerful medium to encourage that, which explains my signature line, 'Let's save the world through science fiction.'

I prefer to bring these to the service of story rather than to let them replace narrative.

In hard-core science fiction in which characters are responding to a change in environment, caused by nature or the universe or technology, what readers want to see is how people cope, and so the character are present to cope, or fail to cope.

Let's face it: there's still a certain amount of racism in human beings, so that shows up in Hollywood.

I can't be told life is beautiful through a normal positive thinking book or a Hallmark movie; that language doesn't work for me.

One should be willing to throw away a dozen ideas to come up with a good one, just as one should throw away a dozen words to come up with the right one.

When I was a small child, I partially learned to read with comics, in particular with 'Scamp,' about the Lady and the Tramp's male child. That was the prime comic that made me fall in love with comics as a kid.

Maybe it's the feminine side of me, but I like that AM radio pop.

That is who my people are - the oddballs, the rebels, and the geeks. That's what I am, so it's what I naturally feel connected to.

By isolating the issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, climate change, environment, governance, economics, catastrophe and whatever other problems the present embodies or the future may bring, science fiction can do what Dickens and Sinclair did: make real the consequences of social injustice or human folly.

I made 'Super' for $3 million, and that was filmed in 24 days. And that $3 million dollars went to a lot of things other than what shows up on screen. Once you get done with the unions and everything else, that's just, like, the basic cost of what you can make a movie for.

When you're on an independent film, you have a lot of great people there who are telling really true and authentic stories. But you also have a lot of con artists and people who think they can do something that they can't.

There will be a 'Guardians 3,' that's for sure. We're trying to figure it out. I'm trying to figure out what I want to do. Really, that's all it is.

It's great being a producer! Why am I wasting my career writing and directing? Those are actual jobs in which you work. Being a producer, it's kind of like you just go to the set, yell at a couple of people, and then stay up all night dancing in nightclubs.

I don't see a big difference between the job of directing a low-budget movie and the job of directing a big-budget movie.

Let me tell you one thing: there is no more cutthroat place to be than an independent film. Disney is a cakewalk after that - that is no lie.

One rule of invention: before you can invent it, you have to imagine it.

If I get a gig or I don't get a gig, I really have never, ever, ever cared.

I love shooting movies. I love the shots. That's the thing that I love doing, and I've just never been able to do it.

I'm in favor of anything that will give strong women more visibility in popular culture.

Writing a comic book series, you're so reliant on whoever the artist is. It truly is collaboration.

A lot of people die in my movies. So if you're in a few of my movies, you have a good chance of dying!

I know, people have had different things to say about Marvel, about how creatively free they are or not free they are, but for me, the rule has always just been stay as good as I can possibly be, and stay one step ahead of the curve, and stay unique, and stay myself. And they seem to like that.

Science fiction always has had strains of pessimism and optimism weaving through its historical development, sometimes one dominating and then the other, usually depending on the state of the world.

I don't have anything against corporate America. I mean, I guess there's something about living in a capitalist society that can get kind of terrifying at times.

For the theatrical experience to survive, spectacle films need to expand their definition of what they can be. They need to be unique and true voices of the filmmakers behind them. They can't just be copying what came before them.

It also is true that some ideas naturally work themselves out over a longer period of time than a single human life can encompass.

I have a very strong imagination and have since I was a little kid. That is where a lot of my world comes from. It's like I'm off somewhere else. And I can have a problem in life because of that, because I'm always off in some other world thinking about something else. It's constant.

I feel like I've kinda danced around telling the truest story I can for many years of my life. I've been a little distracted by trying to be shocking or edgy or cool or whatever, and by letting go of that and telling the truest story I can - even if it's about aliens and talking raccoons - it works.

The popularity of fantasy surpassing science fiction and the popularity of apocalyptic fiction, particularly for young adults, may indicate a desire to escape a more difficult and confusing reality, even in astrophysics and particle physics.

My favorite dark comedy, which is also one of my favorite films of all time, is 'After Hours.' I've seen 'After Hours' as much as almost any film I've ever seen in my life; I've watched it dozens of times, and I still watch it once a year. I still get a thrill out of it every time I see it.

When I write a screenplay - and I think it's one of the reasons why it was frustrating for me just to be a screenwriter - I'm not thinking of it in terms of words on a page; I'm thinking in terms of visual images - basically, a comic book. I'm thinking of it in a series of shots.

I like Jason Statham movies, like 'The Transporter' or whatever. I watch them all the time when they come on TV. Then I saw 'Crank,' and I couldn't believe how awesome it was.

I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I got to direct a movie involving three of my favorite things in the world: space operas, Marvel superheroes and raccoons.

I have to say, I feel a weird sort of calling in filmmaking that I didn't feel with other things. I feel like there are things in life you want to do, and then things you are called to do, and hopefully you can allow yourself to want to do whatever you're called to do.

When 'Blade Runner' came out, and especially, even actually when 'Alien' came out, it kind of changed how all science fiction movies were designed after that. And that was a really great thing. Now we're watching a lot of movies that are Xeroxes of Xeroxes of Xeroxes of Xeroxes of 'Blade Runner.'

I was as huge Spider-Man fan as a kid, but I really liked The Defenders a lot. I was also a big Moon Knight fan for some reason.

'Monty Python And The Holy Grail' is a hugely important movie to me. I remember watching it for the first time on cable when I was about 13 years old.

The movies I like watching the most are these sort of cinema verite, handheld films where you really get gritty with people. But I also have this strange affinity for old Rock Hudson/Doris Day movies and things that sort of pop out where you see the frames, where you have these 2D animation moments and split-screens and things like that.

My girlfriend says I have frontal-lobe epilepsy. I have visions. They have slowed down as I've gotten older, but I still have them.

I'm a little bit twisted, so what makes me laugh the hardest doesn't necessarily make other people laugh.