What I have learned from my work up to now, is to try to be open, but also protect myself by not letting the good and the evil get too much importance.

I would love to see more women directors because they represent half of the population and gave birth to the whole world. Without them the rest [of the world] are not getting to know the whole story.

There are some things that are real, that you can see, that you can observe, like the moon, and grass and things. But for ideas to become real, they have to be played on your senses.

For me, being a director is about watching, not about telling people what to do. Or maybe it's like being a mirror; if they didn't have me to look at, they wouldn't be able to put the make-up on.

I think if it's interesting, it's interesting, and if it's not, it's not working.

I'm someone who loves to play. I make films so I can have fun with the characters.

It's harder being a woman director because on the whole women don't have husbands or boyfriends who are willing to be wives

Only when you are relaxed can you see what's going on.

Performers are so vulnerable. They're frightened of humiliation, sure their work will be crap. I try to make an environment where it's warm, where it's OK to fail - a kind of home, I suppose.

The studio system is kind of an old boys system and it's difficult for them to trust women to be capable

Women today are dealing with both their independence and also the fact that their lives are built around finding and satisfying the romantic models we grew up with.

Sometimes you don't know how mean you can become when it comes to protecting your loved ones.

Essentially, meditation means to experientally realize that you are not an individual bubble - you are a universe.

That is what the past was, that which you could not get rid of. The past did not resemble the crumbs spilled over a rug. You could not shake them out from open windows.

My family is pretty funny. My mother is British, so she's got a very dry sense of humor. That's where I got that from.

We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.

Night is a more quiet time to work. It aids thought.

I wasn't passionate about food until I'd been cooking for a while. I started long before food became part of the mainstream media. I just wanted to cook, period.

The real question is what to live for. And I can't answer it. Except another one of your records. And another chance for me to write. Art for art's sake, corny as that sounds.

We may say that life has borrowed from inanimate processes the same basic mechanism used in producing those striking structures that are crystals, with their beautiful plane faces.

In Cuba we have one party, but in the U.S. there is very little difference. Both parties are an expression of the ruling class.