Consequently, their school [film-school ] was the school of life, and it was very much reflected in their work.

I had a checkered early career, for sure, with a lot of very unhappy experiences where pictures got taken away, re-cut, re-titled... all the nightmares one hears about.

What you care about [movie] is whether it's moving you, or whether you're caught up in it.

Hollywood, of course, is the city of illusion.

You can dress it up, but it comes down to the fact that a movie is only as good as its script.

Whereas to write, all you need is paper and an idea, so I felt that writing might be my stepping stone.

Self-awareness and self-esteem. Those aren't female issues, those are human issues.

Put simply, there are many people who want to make movies and very few opportunities for them to do it.

I grew up as a reader as well as a movie-lover, so many of the novelists I admired - and so many of the great filmmakers I loved - were self-taught.

Consequently, it's so gratifying to then make a picture that's successful and gives you leverage to have better circumstances than you've ever had, before the next time out.

You can imagine what it was like for me to actually be sitting in a room with matching typewriters, working under the tutelage of this guy I so admired, both as a filmmaker and as a man.

These are pictures of the people in my family where we look like the most awkward and desperate folk you ever saw, poster children for the human condition.

Sometimes in the black culture, being raised as an independent woman is misconstrued as someone who doesn't need a man. I think that's wrong. I think we all need someone.

I believe that when you have fans, they invest in you not just as a singer but as a person as well. It's not enough to just have good songs and a good voice.

Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard. What you’ve really got to do is focus on learning as much about life, and about various aspects of it first.

Hate war, but love the American Warrior.

All our knowledge is the offspring of our perceptions.

There is no foreground or background, only a continuity of interlacing relationships

There are so many bands always doing the same album over and over; I want to evolve, try new things.

The love of fame usually spurs on the mind. [Lat., Ingenio stimulos subdere fama solet.]

Did you know that the institution of marriage was created when the average person lived to the age of 30?