My kids started school so having a strong base in Melbourne has been a key priority. I'm not daunted by the travel. People say 'It's so far to Australia ' and I say 'You get on the plane you eat well you sleep you wake up - and you're there.'

We have so much pride in welcoming these passengers onto the plane and they have so much pride in travel. It's something that I definitely always remember when I'm playing a scene on the plane just to imbue everything with that sense of excitement.

And I think it's that time. And I think if you just step aside and Mr. Romney can kind of take over. You can maybe still use a plane. Though maybe a smaller one. Not that big gas guzzler you are going around to colleges and talking about student loans and stuff like that.

Every time I go and shave I assume there's someone else on the planet shaving. So I say 'I'm gonna go shave too.'

For me modern technology has ruined romance and movies - nobody can run to the airplane gate anymore.

Technology is a wonderful tool but also if used incorrectly a horrible tool. We're fascinated by all aspects of it whatever makes our human lives easier on the planet but eventually there will have to be some sort of merger. The fascination isn't going to die down.

I do not think that there is a reputable scientist on this planet who would advocate using this technology to generate a human child as was just announced.

I've always liked Saturn. But I also have some sympathy for Pluto because I heard it's been downgraded from a planet and I think it should remain a planet. Once you've given something planetary status it's kind of mean to take it away.

Two nations between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy who are as ignorant of each other's habits thoughts and feelings as if they were dwellers in different zones or inhabitants of different planets. The rich and the poor.

I pick projects according to how fascinating they are to me and it has resulted in a broad reach. My records are actually in five different sports: balloons airplanes airships gliders and sailboats.

Patriarchy is like the elephant in the room that we don't talk about but how could it not affect the planet radically when it's the superstructure of human society.

Man is the animal that intends to shoot himself out into interplanetary space after having given up on the problem of an efficient way to get himself five miles to work and back each day.

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

When I was a kid I loved 'The Curse of Frankenstein ' 'The Creeping Unknown ' 'X: The Unknown.' I love 'Forbidden Planet ' 'The Thing from Another World.' They were science fiction/horror movies generally.

Science Fiction is not just about the future of space ships travelling to other planets it is fiction based on science and I am using science as my basis for my fiction but it's the science of prehistory - palaeontology and archaeology - rather than astronomy or physics.

What has become clear from the science is that we cannot burn all of the fossil fuels without creating a very different planet.

As I have tried to show science in producing the airplane and the wireless has created a new international political environment to which governments must adjust their foreign policies.

A permanent base on Mars would have a number of advantages beyond being a bonanza for planetary science and geology. If as some evidence suggests exotic micro-organisms have arisen independently of terrestrial life studying them could revolutionise biology medicine and biotechnology.

We're looking at Earth science observing our planet. Also space science looking at the ozone in the atmosphere around our Earth. Also looking at life science. And on a human level using ourselves as test subjects.

We sat around on a hotel balcony with a bottle of wine and tried to figure out how you would go about blowing up a planet. That's the kind of conversations science fiction writers have when they get together. We don't talk about football or anything like that.

I like science fiction and physics things like that. Planets being sucked into black holes and the various vortexes that create possibility and what happens on the other side of the black hole. To me it's the microcosmic study of the macrocosmic universe in man and that's why I'm attracted to it.

Science fiction to me has not only things that wouldn't happen but other planets.

When I investigate and when I discover that the forces of the heavens and the planets are within ourselves then truly I seem to be living among the gods.

It will free man from the remaining chains the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet.