Most human beings who are accustomed to attempting to see the world from various points of view tend to be more liberal than conservative. I have one life. I am a certain age. I'm married to one person. I have a certain number of children. I won't have another life other than that, but I do have many lives through the films. It's a way for me to understand what it's like to be a murderer, to confess, to be a beaten wife, to be a minority, to be a victor, to get the girl, to lose the girl. I can do all of that through the practice of an art form.

The very reasons sometimes that you make a film are the reasons for its failure.

Three Days of the Condor is still an interesting film to watch not because it's political. It happens to be political. But that's not why the sales of the DVDs are as high as they are. It's because it's an entertaining thriller. In my opinion, Tootsie is a very political movie but truck drivers can go and laugh at it.

Reading a novel of a private experience, very, very different, the nature of it is very different.

When you work without a script, you are in a sense working in a much more improvisational way than when you are prepared totally.

I'm not a very good predictor in any area of art, particularly my own. I don't know how to evaluate that.

Editing feels almost like sculpting or a form of continuing the writing process.