Because my parents had given me tremendous respect, trust, and freedom as a child, I knew how to take responsibility for myself. If you're constantly being told "No, don't do that" or "We don't trust you," you can't develop that responsibility.

I don't want to sound like a heroic woman or to seem full of myself, but I do have a core of trust that I'll figure things out and find my way. And if whatever I try is not a good experience, even that is a good experience. If something turns out lousy, it's interesting.

I'm not going to spend two years on a film or four years on an opera if I don't feel like I can put my own self into it. That doesn't mean it has to be about myself.

An artist is an entertainer, number one - a storyteller who takes people someplace, who gives them what they didn't know they wanted.

I've had male executives say that my lead character was unlikable because she slept with a lot of guys.

It's how you tell the story that makes it new. That's what artists do. They let us look at the world from a different perspective. They let us look at birds in a way that makes us never see birds again in the same way. That's why I don't think computers are healthy for kids. They're too literal. You pop a button and a bluebird comes out. You pop another button and you can take the color blue and shove it into the outline of the bluebird.

I really do believe that if you don't challenge yourself and risk failing, that it's not interesting.