I have suckled the wolf's lip of anger and I have used it for illumination, laughter, protection, fire in places where there was no light, no food, no sisters, no quarter.

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.

When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.

I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.

Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone; who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.

If I cannot air this pain and alter it, I will surely die of it. That's the beginning of social protest.

When we perceive aliens as a joke to be laughed at, they feel so pity for us on the success of their plans.

There is in superstition a senseless fear of God.

The men who followed Him were unique in their generation. They turned the world upside down because their hearts had been turned right side up. The world has never been the same.

For thousands of years art was seen as a source of responsible moral and ethical leadership. Today, taking that stance is almost seen as comic.

Socialism is the triumph of people's prejudices over their reason.

There's this phenomenon where people do like to announce movies that they think I'm doing that I'm not.

You can be a woman in charge of a production and still be generous and kind and insightful and decisive without being considered a butch in any way.

But he kept finding new pockets of shallow inside himself. He kept finding new ways to betray her.

My life was one very long process of lying and lying again, to figure out how to cover those other lies.

In good films, there is always a directness that entirely frees us from the itch to interpret.