History and experience tell us that moral progress comes not in comfortable and complacent times but out of trial and confusion.

One nice thing about being a woman in Hollywood is that the women tend to be very close-knit. All of us writers and directors know each other and cling to each other for safety and support and it's really a completely different vibe than the men experience out here where they're all trying to murder each other.

There's probably no experience more alienating than fame other than a terminal illness where you actually find yourself in a situation that nobody around you can relate to.

You know it shouldn't just be about women as heroic figures overcoming things it just needs to be about women in general getting the opportunity to play a multitude of roles telling a multitude of stories - just to express human experience from a woman's perspective. I hope someday we can get to that point. I'm all about representation.

I had the experience last year of directing my first feature while I had a 1-year-old son and while I was also pregnant so I am now well aware of the difficulties women who are rearing children face when they're also trying to make headway in mainstream of film.

I hate it when people don't recognize the work of women as being universal or having any import to the world at large as opposed to men's work which is generally tends to be seen as more universal - men's writing about their own experience tends to be put in a broader context.

The first essential in writing about anything is that the writer should have no experience of the matter.

More people should read books. It's the most concentrated experience you can have.

I've been looking to do TV for a while. I've always done guest starring stuff. I've done a couple of multi-episode arcs and I've always loved the experience.

Many spiritual teachers - in Buddhism in Islam - have talked about first-hand experience of the world as an important part of the path to wisdom to enlightenment.