I don't steer towards anything. I steer towards character and truth. If it's funny then so be it. If it's dramatic, so be it. I just steer towards characters.

I love going back in time, and the only time you can really do that is on a movie set.

People return my phone calls now, which is really interesting. I'll tell you what I've learned that's kind of bittersweet. So many doors have opened up. I've met everybody in the business. I'm fortunate people want to work with me.

As a writer, as much as I try, I can't stop writing female characters. They have so much more to offer; they have to wear so many different hats. There's so much wonderful gray matter in a female's life that it just makes for a stronger character.

I met this woman who was a hundred, this housekeeper, a hundred years old. I interviewed her. She just told me about her whole life. She's like, 'I can't read, I can't write; I can tell you who I was working for, and I can tell you the year, but who was president?

After all, the ordinary hero hiding in each of us is often the most powerful catalyst for change.

Everybody in the South loves the one closeted homosexual who's married. It's just too funny to not have in a movie about the South. It's an epidemic. You gotta represent!