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

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.

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 wonder if other mothers feel a tug at their insides, watching their children grow up into the people they themselves wanted so badly to be.

Don't risk your life for those that doesn't love your life, lest you end up in regrets if not death.

I would have stayed a hundred times and I would have left one time only - still, I left.

Look behind you in gratitude.Look ahead of you in hope.Look beside you in caution.Look around you in faith.

I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference.

What shell did not feel the sound waves and which bird did not face at least once the wind?

When you're 18, you're just so busy being scared and having fun - a crazy mixture - that you never thought of dying.

I don't even take aspirin.

In a democratic scheme, money invested in the promotion of learning gives a tenfold return to the people even as a seed sown in good soil returns a luxuriant crop.

Pictures are not incidental frills to a text; they are essences of our distinctive way of knowing.