I can't imagine people telling me what to do - I just can't imagine it.

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.

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 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.

The problem is people want help, but when help arrives you want to tell the help how to help you. Learn to RECEIVE help.

The whole summer was inside of us.

Of this alone, even god is deprived, the power of making things that are past never to have been.

What engenders hatred towards the Sharia? When people find their basic needs are not being met, then people just see it as unfair.

Failure should be our teacher...

Crimes lead into one another. They who are capable of being forgers, are capable of being incendiaries.

Appeal must be to an informed, civically militant electorate.

When you follow the path of love you should feel that each one is perfect in their own right. While you can love others, never, ever, ever judge them.

...but somehow the madness around me and the turmoil I carried within myself acted as counterweights, and I survived in the centre.

All the kids made their own git-tars. Made mine out of a box and bit of stick for a neck. Couldn't do much with it, but that's how you learn.