If I don't have to think about the commercial aspect of it, then I feel like I'm going to make better films.

There's so much great TV and I always thought it would be such a fun little sideway to make money and then not have to worry about my films making a lot of money.

I'm drawn again and again to relationships between people who really, really want to connect and just can't get out of their own way to do it.

For me, I want to see diversity in storytelling sources because we live in a very diverse society, and the stories are for the whole society. That's really important. For me, as a female filmmaker, when I was out on the festival circuit on 2006, I felt like such a freaking anomaly - an oddity.

If I don't have to think about the commercial aspect of it, then I feel like I'm going to make better films.

My mom was in education, and I remember reading in one of her books about multiple intelligences - this whole theory about how there are all these different ways you can be intelligent, like eight or 10 of them or something. And one of them is emotional.

I like being able to just turn the microscope on a small number of people, get to know them, drop into their lives for a period of time.