In my early thirties I was working in television as a researcher. I was really stuck for a period of five years. I got to TV when I was thirty. I hated being a music writer, and kept wondering why I couldn't be doing the exciting things that my friends were doing in television.

There's no need to be tragic or destroy yourself or jump off a cliff. That's no longer the paradigm I wish to follow, or that anyone should follow. It is not necessary to be tragic. It's bullshit that women can't have it all. Why not? Other people do.

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

Mostly I'm just not American. I spent four years of my childhood here, but I think if you're Canadian you have a very different perspective. You don't think you're at the center of things.

When people see the conventions, they think they're going to get the straightforward genre - I don't give them that and they get mad. People see that and they think I don't understand the conventions because I'm not a good filmmaker.

She [Bettie Page] was a traumatized person, but she did have an active sex life.

I had long periods where I couldn't make things happen, and then periods of enormous good luck. I guess the trick is to keep going in the periods when you're not lucky, when your stars are not aligned.