I was always looking for the most dramatic emphasis.

But even with a character like Cary who is relatively outlandish, at the end of the movie he's in a place where I wouldn't have expected him to be - taking on the responsibility of a woman who is pregnant and who used to be his best friend's wife.

Without In The Company of Men, I could still be teaching, so who knows if this would've existed.

And I've got some screenplays and plays ready to dip into when I need to.

If we put the camera on ourselves, our friends and neighbors, we'll come up with some scary stuff.

There is a lot of absurdity sometimes, not just in Mormonism but often in other religions that want to pretend that no bad happens in their church, rather than taking care of what bad does happen.

People think my work is therapeutic. I don't see it that way. It's not like I'm saving money from a weekly therapy visit by writing down my life.

My best male friend is my best friend until he crosses me. We're all protective of the self.

We live in a disposable society. It's easier to throw things out than to fix them. We even give it a name - we call it recycling.

I think the more the actor lets you know what he thinks of the character, the less the audience cares - like a comedian who laughs at his own jokes.

I was very careful to cast guys who were very good-looking and very fit and who had a certain sense of privilege about them, because with that sense of privilege comes contempt.

But for me, it feels like a natural extension of what I've been doing: exploring relationships. Here you have two relationships and we can explore how difficult it is for people to be together.

I didn't choose BYU, I like to think it chose me.

People have perhaps gotten to the point where for the most part movies are a just bit of escape.

I will say that the idea of a woman being deceptive came from that original discussion with critics and reporters about if woman could do that kind of thing. Evelyn, herself, grew out of the discussions about how capable women are of deceit and lying and manipulation.

Everyone has a little bit of Howard and Chad in them. I think there's Christine in all men as well.

My business is can I create a world that's possible and could happen? I think that's the only thing that I have to do, and I think that I have done that each time.

With In the Company of Men, the misogynist label stuck early and firmly. In the end, it probably did hurt the film a bit, because getting women into the theaters was difficult.

We humans are a fairly barbarous bunch.

I'm more than open to hope, but I think men and women have a difficult time dealing with each other and often take the low road.

And with Aaron, I'd have to find a reason not to work with him.

Everyone has a story.

I see bits and pieces of me in all the characters in my films.

Unrequited love is always a great thing.

I think Christine and Chad are on the opposite extremes of the spectrum. Christine is a model victim, and Chad is a model perpetrator, and Howard is closer to the middle.

I have a healthy view of what one can do with art.

In a relationship you have to open yourself up.

I make movies I want to see.

I wanted to tell a story that interested me as much in the telling as in the watching.

I would be more frightened as a writer if people thought my movies were like science fiction.

Relationships in general make people a bit nervous. It's about trust. Do I trust you enough to go there?

Just in the past few years - since I've been making movies, which isn't a very long time - you now have a culture that is fascinated and informed about the box office in a way that sometimes filmmakers weren't even.

Everybody has the ability to be manipulative, to be hateful and deceitful.

I wanted to make these people real, not like they were in a painting. Like these are people who don't know they're in a period movie. Those concerns are incredibly immediate.

You start as an audience member and create a world you're interested in, and then you move into the telling of those stories, bringing what has interested you as an audience member.

I was always looking for the most dramatic emphasis.

First I would probably place men at the bottom of the food chain. On a grander scale, I would say they're reacting to change. Feminism has got to be part of that.

My best male friend is my best friend until he crosses me. Were all protective of the self.

My face is not perfect. Because my nose is not sharp, many people suggested I should get my nose done.

The market tends to pay as a wage what an individual laborer is worth. But the case last studied suggests the question how accurately the law operates in practice. May it not be an honest law, but be so vitiated in its working as to give a dishonest result?

Is marijuana addictive? Yes, in the sense that most of the really pleasant things in life are worth endlessly repeating.

Once you take a life, that's it. I don't even deserve to be here.

All the things that people like me supposedly don't do, I do.

I'm a black woman who loves hair. I enjoy changing my hair, having fun with it - just hair! I go from braids, to weaves, to wigs, to natural hair.

I definitely don't see myself as an actor. I don't even have it on my passport. I've got 'writer and electrician' on my passport. I don't want anyone to think I'm an actor.

On A Beautiful Mind, there was a wall of math.

Worrying is stupid. It's like walking around with an umbrella waiting for it to rain.

Groups like the NAACP, The Anti-Defamation League, NOW and GLAAD, will respond to derisive language directed at their constituents. The price paid by those who cavalierly chose to verbally disrespect the dignity of African Americans, Jews, women and homosexuals is steep.

I'm not perfect and I know it. I've done all sorts of things that are frowned upon these days - big-game hunting, fishing. I still enjoy fishing but I don't kill warm-blooded animals any more - I make an exception with birds sometimes.