I take mentoring very seriously and I am on the board of an organization called Girls Write Now where we match teen girls and writing mentors because it changes their lives.

Being around some of the bright lights of the technology world and having them expect great things helps you sit down and do it seriously.

Seriously we are in the midst of the convergence of voice and data and that is challenging the infrastructure of the telephone companies. There are huge commercial interests in the basic technology but even more so in content delivery and control of content.

To expect alien technology to be just a few decades ahead of ours is too incredible to be taken seriously.

I take people very seriously. People are all I take seriously in fact. Therefore I have nothing but sympathy for how people behave - and nothing but laughter to console them with.

I was always trying to make up for my size to compensate. So to get people to take you seriously you have to come at things with a great deal of strength. You have to emphasize that the way you are is unusual. That you don't come along every day.

I don't put anything in front of taking ski racing and sports seriously.

Drama lives on conflict. If you're trying to deal with social issues seriously there's no way of avoiding violence which is so present in society.

When I did 'Battlestar Galactica' it was the first time I really understood science fiction. That was a very political drama but set in spaceships so people didn't really take it seriously. But some really fascinating things were explored in that.

If Margaret Thatcher took climate change seriously and believed that we should take action to reduce global greenhouse emissions then taking action and supporting and accepting the science can hardly be the mark of incipient Bolshevism.