I was one of five very clever kids, the other kids were cleverer than I was and still are and are very achieving. The girls were always first at everything and I was always 101st!

I have always believed that there is a need for life-affirming films.

You know, you lose a lot of social skills if you’re a writer. You spend too long alone. And it’s forced me to address that.

Once you start to realize that a film is the sum of its editing, then editing is the thing you're always looking at.

The feeling of not belonging, of not being entirely worthy, of being sometimes hostage to your own sensibilities. Those things speak to me very personally.

My grandmother was a huge influence on me and the fact that there was this very strong, rather formidable presence of women in my life has been an enormous value.

The only lesson to extract from any civil war is that it's pointless and futile and ugly, and that there is nothing glamorous or heroic about it. There are heroes, but the causes are never heroic.

Look at it this way: if you write the novel of 'Cold Mountain,' it costs exactly the same to produce and market as a novel set in a room. If you make the film, the disparity of costs is huge.

No studio in Hollywood wanted 'Cold Mountain.' None. No one wanted 'Ripley,' no one wanted 'The English Patient.' That tells you there isn't really an appetite for ambitious movie-making out there.

I don't hold with the notion that only bad books make good movies.

[Abbas Kiarostami] is a great artist and a poet. I sometimes think that if Samuel Beckett made films, he'd make them like Kiarostami makes them.

Selfishness is self-absorption, self-seeking behaviour that either disregards the rights and needs of others or tramples them deliberately in favour of personal gain.

I really hate it when people want to kill me. It makes me think they don't want to be friends. - Raven from Blood of Prey

She is so lovely she could kill you without you even noticing it. A monster girl who knows when to kiss and when to kill.

God help those who have the wit to quote themselves, that they may reap the harvest of their ideas.

I never liked Jules Verne, believing that the real was always more fantastic than the fantastical.

Everything I've experienced, things that my friends have experienced and we talk about, things that are on the news - all aspects of life are in my message.

I'm glad that we have a history at all and that we can talk about feminist history. But I do think that it doesn't really pay attention to the complexity and the nuance that is feminist thought.

My first love is acting on stage. A sitcom is a hybrid of stage and film.

My personal life was fair game. And that's what hurt me.

Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed. They are sensitive plants, which will not bear too familiar approaches.