My guiltiest pleasure is reading a novel with a glass of wine. I love to read voraciously. I always have. And I love to lose myself in a good book.

Perseverance is what I tell my students. It's important that you keep your dream alive, because you're going to encounter a lot of obstacles, and no one is going to dream big for you. You have to have the fortitude and the resilience to stick with your own dreams. That can be hard.

I love working with young artists. Jacob Latimore was the first kid that I auditioned. After he walked out, I turned to my husband and said, "I think that's the kid. I don't know if I have to look any further. He's the one!" He's a real star.

I've come to really believe that I have something to offer as a filmmaker, that goes beyond what I had to offer as an actress and maybe this is what I'm meant to do.

I don't over-think my existence. I'm a very imperfect person, like most of us are. I'm also a very busy person. I have a family. I have a career. I'm a professor at NYU. I have a full life for which I feel grateful every day.

I encountered Newton when I was growing up, and it has kind of made me who I am, although I came to love Boston. It's a complicated city. Some of the smartest people in the world are in Boston. How many institutions of higher learning are in that one area? It's a pool of intelligence. It's a great town. You can encounter racism anywhere. I have a lot of nostalgic feelings about Boston. It was a cool place to grow up.

One of my foolish qualities is to jump boldly, and then think about it later.