"A man who graduated high in his class at Yale Law School and made partnership in a top law firm would be celebrated. A man who invested wisely would be admired, but a woman who accomplishes this is treated with suspicion."

"I must have got my detailed, obsessive streak from my father, who was an English teacher, because my mother wasn't like me at all."

"I've been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good."

"I go by instinct - I don't worry about experience."

"The pursuit of excellence requires knowing that every step forward is a victory over stagnation."

"I've been lucky to travel through quite a bit of Europe and Australia, but I would love to do Asia and South America and South Africa."

"Before I'd written movies, I never could do big set-piece scenes with a lot of different speakers - when you've got twelve people around a dinner table talking at cross purposes. I had always been impressed by other people's ability to do that."

"I've noticed that my resolutions involve me not doing stuff that I wasn't going to do anyway so here's something more positive. I'm going to retrain as a Latin teacher in a provincial public school."