David Puttnam

I absolutely refuse to accept the fact that any country in the world goes into a kind of film-making crisis. What happens is they lose confidence, they lose focus and the young film-makers of any particular generation can very easily get lost in that mix. It's happened in Italy, happened in France, happened in the U.K. during my lifetime.

I do read a lot, and I think in recent years the ratio between the amount of non-fiction and fiction has tipped quite considerably. I did read fiction as a teenager as well, mostly because I was forced to read fiction, of course, to go through high school.

Biologically inspired materials could revolutionize materials science. People looking at spider silk and abalone shells are looking for new ways to make materials better, cheaper, and with less toxic byproducts.