I choose material instinctually - at the heart of it are characters that I feel are fresh and original, and allow for an opportunity to, I suppose, explore uncharted ground.

I'm drawn to filmmaking that can transport me. Film can immerse you, put you there.

The journey for women, no matter what venue it is - politics, business, film - it's, it's a long journey.

I don't want to be made pacified or made comfortable. I like stuff that gets your adrenaline going.

Something becomes personal when it deviates from the norm.

Whereas painting is a more rarefied art form, with a limited audience, I recognized film as this extraordinary social tool that could reach tremendous numbers of people.

It's irrelevant who or what directed a movie; the important thing is that you either respond to it or you don't.

Cinema has the capacity to be so physiological.

There should be more women directing; I think there's just not the awareness that it's really possible.

Films don't cause violence, people do. Violence defines our existence. To shield oneself is more dangerous than trying to reflect it.

I need to have my hands on the DNA of a film.

Live all you can: it's a mistake not to. It doesn't matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?

Sick of this StateOf that Stateless StatesThat moves at this rateThat Knocks at the GateAnd Yearns for the remains Of the brave new fate.

Happy were men if they but understood There is no safety but in doing good.

My grandfather was a provider. Work, any kind of work, was the joy of his life. So I grew up having a certain relationship to work. It was something that I always wanted.

Any fool can tell a crisis when it arrives. The real service to the state is to detect it in embryo.

When selling, never answer an unasked question.

I spent most of my adult life as someone's mother and the rest of my life trying to make sure that children are safe. So this to me is - we wrote Hell Is For Children in 1979.

The meager satisfaction that man can extract from reality leaves him starving.

Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.

The beginning is perhaps more difficult than anything else, but keep heart, it will turn out all right.