Quotes from J. J. Abrams

I work with really hard-working people who are really good at what they do.

With three kids you are just trying to survive. You can't be fastidious.

I don't try and write strong female characters or strong male characters, I just try and write, hopefully, strong characters and sometimes they happen to be female.

Stories in which the destruction of society occurs are explorations of social fears and issues that filmmakers, novelists, playwrights, painters have been examining for a long time.

I feel like obviously the standard for what TV looks like changes all the time.

Obviously with the Internet and increased access to other means of watching shows, the audience has dispersed and is all over the place and that is a challenge.

We're living at a time where if you do a Google search for a 'show, review and network,' you'll get 'The New York Times' and Pete Billingsley from a town you've never heard of on the same results page. It's kind of democratizing the process so that everyone has access to a distribution system to express themselves.

Robotics are beginning to cross that line from absolutely primitive motion to motion that resembles animal or human behavior.

I don't think I have a signature.

I love movies with spectacle but spectacle can be a performance, it doesn't have to be a creature.

I love recording music.

I love the idea of anthropomorphizing machines. I love the idea of taking technology and giving it a personality.

I love working with the right actor, and if the right actor happens to be unknown, that should be allowed, too, I think.

I'd love to do a movie where the monster is human, where the issue is not otherworldly, or horror or science fiction.

Every hour that you spend doing something, even if you love it more than anything, you're not with your family. Every project that you take on, that's another choice.

I sort of love the idea of, you know, watching something and then having to wait for the next episode.

'Star Trek' was always a little bit closed emotionally. I never connected to the characters.

One of my favorite things about 'Star Trek' wasn't just the overt banter but the humor in that show about the relationships between the main characters and their reactions to the situations they would face; there was a lot of comedy in that show without ever breaking its reality.

I've had the same friends since I was in kindergarten.

When you go to commercial, you want something to call the viewers back, and if you don't have a decent act out, the audience probably won't be there in the numbers you want when the show returns.

All I know is that I've made some big screw-ups, and I've done some things that have done all right. I just keep trying to learn from the mistakes I've made.

I'm not trying to be coy or manipulative or Machiavellian, I want to spark people's imaginations.

Whenever a toddler sees a pile of blocks, he wants to tear it down.

People never know what they want, though everyone says they do. If they did, nobody would ever be surprised.