Quotes from J. J. Abrams

We're always pitching ideas and being told "no thank you." No offense taken, because I would so much rather be told the truth that they're not interested and be able to find the right show for that network down the line.

I feel like in telling stories, there are the things the audience thinks are important, and then there are the things that are actually important.

I'm actually a huge fan of digital as well. I appreciate how that technology opens the doors for filmmakers who never had access to that level of quality before. However, I do think film itself sets the standard for quality. You can talk about range, light, sensitive, resolution -- there's something about film that is undeniably beautiful, undeniably organic and natural and real.

In whatever it is that I do, I find myself drawn to infinite possibility, that sense of potential.

What I'm still grappling with and learning how to do is to be looking and thinking cinematically, having come from television.

I try to push ideas away, and the ones that will not leave me alone are the ones that ultimately end up happening.

I love recording music.

I have nothing against 3-D in theory. But I've also never run to the movies because something's in 3-D.

My mother is the coolest, most amazing person I know.

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

I think when you're 10 years old, it's too much to see something with the threat of death in every episode. Kids are better left naive about certain things.

It's a leap of faith doing any serialised storytelling.

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

When I was a kid going into the movies, you weren't force-fed information everywhere you looked about what the movie was going to be.

Making movies was more a reaction to not being chosen for sports. Other kids were out there playing at whatever I was off making something blow up and filming it, or making a mould of my sister's head using alginating plaster.

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

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.

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.

All the times I've been lucky enough to be a part of a show that's actually gotten on the air, it's always that same mixture of excitement and utter fear.

We live in an age of instant knowledge. And there's almost a sense of entitlement to that.

When I was a little kid - and even still - I loved magic tricks. When I saw how movies got made - at least had a glimpse when I went on the Universal Studios tour with my grandfather, I remember feeling like this was another means by which I could do magic.

I hope to make movies that are so small they don't need to make anything to be profitable.

Ratings have changed, viewer habits have changed and the options for the audience have grown enormously, but I don't think how you tell a story is fundamentally different.

When I was a kid going into the movies, you weren't force-fed information everywhere you looked about what the movie was going to be.