It's irrelevant who or what directed a movie; the important thing is that you either respond to it or you don't.

I'm drawn to filmmaking that can transport me. Film can immerse you, put you there.

The journey for women, no matter what venue it is - politics, business, film - it's, it's a long journey.

I don't want to be made pacified or made comfortable. I like stuff that gets your adrenaline going.

Something becomes personal when it deviates from the norm.

Whereas painting is a more rarefied art form, with a limited audience, I recognized film as this extraordinary social tool that could reach tremendous numbers of people.

Cinema has the capacity to be so physiological.

There should be more women directing; I think there's just not the awareness that it's really possible.

Films don't cause violence, people do. Violence defines our existence. To shield oneself is more dangerous than trying to reflect it.

I need to have my hands on the DNA of a film.

Perhaps the only thing in my favor is that I am very tenacious. I don't take 'no' very well.

A community of smashed up things and somehow everyone was willing to share the superglue

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single kind act is better than a thousand head-bowings in prayer.

Corn is a necessary, silver is only a superfluity.

To let go in the deepest recesses of the heart, to release all struggle and wanting, leads us to that knowing which is timeless.

It is time for a new generation of leadership.

I tend to vacillate between belief systems. Right now I'm kind of checking out the whole buffet, you know, and maybe in a little while I'll decide on what I want to put on my plate and chow down on.

Polar Express is not an attempt to do animation. It is a technology-based film.

It's the most unglamourous glamour business in the world.

There's a darkness that everyone must face, it wants to take what's good and fair and lay it all to waste. And that darkness covers everything in sight, until it meets a single point of light.

People of color have a constant frustration of not being represented, or being misrepresented, and these images go around the world.