For me, being a director is about watching, not about telling people what to do. Or maybe it's like being a mirror; if they didn't have me to look at, they wouldn't be able to put the make-up on.

I would love to see more women directors because they represent half of the population and gave birth to the whole world. Without them the rest [of the world] are not getting to know the whole story.

There are some things that are real, that you can see, that you can observe, like the moon, and grass and things. But for ideas to become real, they have to be played on your senses.

I think if it's interesting, it's interesting, and if it's not, it's not working.

I'm someone who loves to play. I make films so I can have fun with the characters.

It's harder being a woman director because on the whole women don't have husbands or boyfriends who are willing to be wives

Only when you are relaxed can you see what's going on.

Performers are so vulnerable. They're frightened of humiliation, sure their work will be crap. I try to make an environment where it's warm, where it's OK to fail - a kind of home, I suppose.

The studio system is kind of an old boys system and it's difficult for them to trust women to be capable

Women today are dealing with both their independence and also the fact that their lives are built around finding and satisfying the romantic models we grew up with.

To deny women directors, as I suspect is happening in the States, is to deny the feminine vision.

I was nervous and confident at the same time nervous about going out there in front of all of those people with so much at stake and confident that I was going to go out there and win.

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity but in being uninteresting.

Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are functioning.

I appreciate my true fans for enjoying me in what I do every day, whether interviews or playing heel. They are smart and nice people.

Although my other ambition was to be a musical theater star (and I would attend college on a voice scholarship), writing was never far from my mind.

Liberty has never lasted long in a democracy, nor has it ever ended in anything better than despotism.

But thought is one thing, the deed is another, and the image of the deed still another: the wheel of causality does not roll between them.

The public citizenship oath done in a court in front of a judge and one's fellow citizens should be done publicly.

I have a hard time watching myself.

Heaven forbids, it is true, certain gratifications, but there are ways and means of compounding such matters.