I think the most liberating thing I did early on was to free myself from any concern with my looks as they pertained to my work.

My own sense of well-being and purpose in the world. That comes from studying the world feelingly, with empathy in my work. It comes from staying alert and alive and involved in the lives of the people that I love and the people in the wider world who need my help.

Instant gratification is not soon enough.

When your kids come home, they don't necessarily want to talk to you. They just want to know you're standing there, ready to talk.

The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.

Sometimes you look out the window and you look at all the windows, and think inside very single one of them is somebody with some huge, weird, terrible problem, some great jokes.

Well, it has to do with very deep things, because it might be that imagining yourself as a girl is a diminishment. But it is something that when I made "The Devil Wears Prada" it was the first time in my life, 30 years of making movies, that a man came up and said I know how you felt. I know how you felt. I have a job like that. People understand.