If a young woman is looking at the landscape of Hollywood, what she sees is almost only challenges.

You should always go where there is a 'you-shaped' hole in the world.

It would probably be too easy a cop out to say that just Republican males hate me. Though there's a large swath of them, for sure.

I have been envious of male characteristics, if not the men themselves. I'm jealous of the ease with which they seem to inhabit their professional pursuits: the lack of apologizing, of bending over backward to make sure the people around them are comfortable with what they're trying to do. The fact that they are so often free of the people-pleasing instincts I have considered to be a curse of my female existence.

I learned about sex pretty early when I was, I remember, my friend Amanda DeLauro explained it to me when I was six and then I went home and I told my parents, "Oh my God, Amanda said this ridiculous thing, can you believe how stupid this is? She's insane.

It's not brave to do something that doesn't scare you. Performing in sex scenes that I direct, exposing a flash of my weird puffy nipple, those things don't fall into my zone of terror.

Once, my little sister was walking down the street in her thick black glasses, and a homeless man muttered, Talk nerdy to me.