Nothing seemed as scary as waking up at 40 and realizing that I had not lived a very courageous life.

I feel like, when the audience connects with something, they enjoy the experience so much that they want other people to go have it. They're like, "Don't talk about it. Don't tell. Just go!" It's a nice feeling to have people coming around it that way, protecting the ideas in it, so that everyone can see it for themselves.

So writing became a way to get to act in things that I thought were meaningful, and hopefully write stronger roles for other women.

I think one thing for sure that you learn the more films that you make is how important it is to choose your collaborators.

That's the funny thing about cinema, it is an intellectual medium, but it's also sort of anti-intellectual.

If you came from the future and you arrived here, what would you be like? Would your immune system be depressed from that travel? Would you be well? Would you be ill? Would you be affected by micro-organisms of the time period and be hiding out in a basement? How would it all work, practically?

I couldn't be a novelist for instance. It feels like a very lonely endeavor. I don't know that I could survive the solitude of that.