When your children are teenagers, it's important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.

New Orleans is one of the two most ingrown, self-obsessed little cities in the United States. (The other is San Francisco.)

My closet is full of sad little scripts that didn't get made that have sad endings. It's very hard to get a movie made that has a sad ending.

Washington is a city of locker-room boys, and all the old, outmoded notions apply: men and women are ushered to separate rooms after dinner, sex is dirty, and they are still serving onion-soup dip.

That's another thing about being a certain age that I've noticed: I try as much as possible not to look in the mirror.

Black makes your life so much simpler. Everything matches black, especially black.

I cannot understand any woman's wanting to be the first woman to do anything. ... It is a devastating burden and I could not take it, could not be a pioneer, a Symbol of Something Greater.