If you have had some taste of success, it's extremely addicting. I think the withdrawal from that is what's most devastating. I don't think it's the success that kills people, it's the withdrawal.

It never occurred to me to be a film director, partly because I hadn't seen a single film by a female director, but I liked the idea of being a writer moving to Hollywood and being unhappy; that sounded romantic and fabulous to me.

At any age you can start over. You have to drop the idea of where you should be in your career. And you have to do without a lot of love. Not everyone's going to love you.

I just don't think I'm an ideological filmmaker in any way. I don't know how anyone could see anything I've done and see that.

I realized you can always make money; you just do a lot of things.

I see that women still have self-doubt, and at the same time I feel like I see all these fantastic young women, and they all have ambition and are so focused on their futures. I don't think that's an anomaly anymore.

I was very ambitious at a young age. When I was six, I would tell everybody that I wanted to be an authoress.