Director

Can you have it all, as a woman? Can you be a creative artist and have stability and a home life? How much can you stretch yourself as an artist?

I try to learn on each project, try to really feel what the characters are feeling.

When you're in a creative flow with somebody - and I had this back in architecture school - you're just so passionate about what you're doing, and if that other person is just as passionate, you'll be madly in love with them. It's just that thrill of creating.

I've had meetings where there were literally, like, 12 angry men in a room and me. And even when everyone shot me down, I somehow dug in one more time.

There are some moments where you're so depressed, you cannot see the way, and you're like, 'Whatever. Bite me.' I think all directors feel that way sometimes.

Back in medieval times, Victorian repression hadn't come in yet. People were bawdy and wild and more in touch with their true natures. If you look at the Bosch paintings or Bruegel, you see, when people are dancing, they're totally cutting loose.

For a film, when you condense, you don't want to keep going back to the same setting over and over.

Obviously, 'Twilight' had its own alchemy that was amazing, just phenomenal. Nobody thought it was going to make any money. Paramount wouldn't make the movie. Fox wouldn't make it. Nobody wanted to do it.

Stephenie Meyer said she's ready to move on from 'Twilight,' but you never know.

As the director, you cannot control what people do after hours or in their trailers or on break. Why would you want to? But you can't.

A great screenplay makes everybody step up to the bar and deliver.

Zombies, mummies - they're disgusting and gross. You don't want to make out with a mummy. At least, I don't.

I don't like to watch a movie where it's just kind of like all one note, dee-dee-dee-dee. I want spikes of adrenaline and highs and lows and exciting tension release.

You don't pay the same price for a Ferrari as you do for a Honda Accord. But for some reason, for movie tickets, you're asked to pay the same price for 'Avatar' as you are for some $2 million movie, which is kind of a weird thing when you think about it.

How do you fight when you're trying to pull somebody's arms off or twist their head off? That makes for a different kind of fight.

The boys in junior high get really lewd and say outrageous stuff to the girls. If somebody yelled the stuff at me that I've heard at junior high schools I've visited, I'd be scared and humiliated.

When I talk to film students, I always say, 'Buy the DVDs and listen to the commentaries, look at the making of, look at the behind-the-scenes,' because that's such a great learning tool.

I'm immature.

Kids have to experiment a little or figure out where they belong.

I don't like the sterility of the casting office.