I can't stand things that are poorly made or shoddily conceived. I feel like I'm being insulted when something is poorly designed, poorly made. It's like whoever made that thing didn't respect the rest of us enough to do it well.

I'm very active in pushing for net neutrality and an open Internet. There are countless other causes I support personally and privately, but I try to keep my public activism fairly focused.

I like shooting things in single takes. You have to rely on the idea itself to carry the full weight you're always watching the idea, not the filmmaking.

It's the good old paradox of democracy. We are individually pretty small drops in the bucket, but collectively we are all powerful.

If some dude I'd never heard of managed to broadcast a platitude like that to the whole globe, I'd probably just feel like I was being spammed.

I'm passionate about music, food, books, film, blah, blah. The same things everyone is passionate about, no? Love, sex, connection. Peace. Not f - - g up our planet.

I can have fairly crippling self-criticism. It doesn't really put me in a vulnerable state, I just get glum and intolerable, but it certainly is a vulnerability.

A lot of things get made this way: someone imagines what they want to make, then very carefully plans every step of the process, then sets about making it. That's usually the efficient, reasonable way to get something done, but it limits you to ideas you can think of in advance.

I think that artists and musicians can do as much harm as good for causes if they tie their names to lots of things, especially if they aren't really doing much to meaningfully push their causes forward.

Everyone loves the idea of internet fast enough that HD movies download in seconds, but if only the telecoms or their partners get to use the high speeds, it's not the internet: It's glorified cable.

I will say that the lead cosmonaut trainer - I mean, we were working with professional cosmonaut trainers outside of Moscow. And the lead one, at the end of the project, announced to the entire group that he wanted Trish [Sie] to be on his team forevermore.

If you have a lot of fans, you have a powerful soapbox, but you still have to have something to say when you're on that soapbox if you want to make a real difference.

What puts me in a vulnerable state? Beauty, wonder, surprise, mystery. Stuff like that.