The lack of women directors is a sad fact of life. Kathryn Bigelows thrilling Best Director win may help turn things around.

No single movie or event makes or breaks your career. Everything can be undone, including success.

Self-love knows no impediment.

In most fields of endeavor there are no easy jobs; there are only graceful ways of performing difficult ones.

To whom one reports is a unit of measure. It measures the exact distance between the player and the center of power. It is the closest we can get to a calibrated answer to the question 'How big am I?' More than the size of an executive's office or even his title, which no one remembers anyway, the fewer people between the player and a 'yes,' the more powerful he is.

My sense of Los Angeles was very New York provincial, as in 'all those people are crazy out there' (which they are), and stupid (which they're not), and immoral (it's more interesting than that).

Ego problems are endemic in every walk of life, but in the movie business egomaniacs are megalomaniacs.