Nashville is the place where I first realized how impossible it is to look at someone and know what is inside them, what special something they possess.

I love to start characters in a place where you think you know them. We can make all kinds of assumptions about them and think they have no redeeming qualities, but like everyone, they're complex.

I think of feminism as more of a political ideology.

One of the magical things about Nashville is just how many incredibly talented people are here and the way they support each other.

When people know I wrote 'Thelma and Louise,' they don't want to mess with me.

The world will provide you with every imaginable obstacle, but the one most difficult to overcome will be the lack of faith in yourself. Leave it to others to have doubts about you.

By luck I mean, when opportunity meets preparation.

Chick flick is not a term used to praise a movie. Nobody says 'it's a great chick flick.' It's a way of being derisive. I'm not clear why it's ok to do it.

If the same energy went into marketing movies to women as they do on the other demographics we might see more of a spike.

I tried to get a baseball movie made a couple of years ago and I don't think it didn't happen because I was a woman, but because sports movie don't sell internationally.

I like writing flawed women, and being one, its something I feel I can write with some veracity and authority.

Maybe we were all destined to just keep doing the same stupid things, over and over again, never really learning a single thing.

A mask is what we wear to hide from ourselves.

Focus on giants - you stumble.Focus on God - Giants tumble.

I forget it's Shane Warne and just think of him as any old bowler lobbing down a lump of leather.

The window of opportunity to avert famine is rapidly closing and could already have closed. The real issue facing us is not whether there will be famine but how many people will actually die.

I have been studying women’s political behavior since the early 1970s and first identified the gender gap in 1980 with the help of legendary pollster Louis Harris.

When your intelligence don't tell you something ain't right, your conscience gives you a tap you on the shoulder and says 'Hold on'. If it don't, you're a snake.

Americans are conservative. What they want to conserve is the New Deal.

Iowans are super talkative, like me. I'm very talkative. I'm very curious about strangers.

And I love doing my own projects; that's what I've always wanted to do.