Anything anybody's used, a comb, a lock of hair, a drop of sweat, anything that comes from somebody's body has incredible magical power.

Men's requirements of women are impossible and ridiculous and so destructive.

I base everything on my own life experiences as a female. I start from there, and then I look for characters and settings that I think are cinematic, where I can use symbols and imagery to tell a story.

What I'm really trying to do is recreate classic Hollywood cinema and classic genre cinema from a woman's point of view. Because most cinema is really made for men, how can you create cinema that's for women without having it be relegated to a ghetto of "chick flick" or something like that?

Men in long-term relationships, we all know how they lose their mojo, they just completely fall apart. They feel like they're not even a man anymore, and they get kind of feminized and weird and they have this longing for this animal, brutal part of themselves to come back. Love does something to men.

I feel like that's how women feel in a way. You can get paranoid because everyone actually is a conspiracy to diminish your power.

Cinema can transform pain and trauma into something beautiful.