Quotes

When I was very little, I probably wanted to be more normal. I probably wanted the Laura Ashley bedroom, and instead I got thrift-store everything.

(About losing her virginity:) I was 16. He was a 27-year-old grad student at Berkeley. I was always interested in sex, even as a kid. Sex includes shame and humiliation and fantasies and longing. It's so dense with the kinds of things I'm interested in.

I'm not a cinephile. My films don't reference films. I'm more interested in rhythm and feeling.

(on certain male directors) They become kind of brands. It's much harder to do that if you're a woman. That's crucial for longevity...All those men are also personal. I don't mind that, but I do mind that it's not really questioned, whereas I or another woman is looked at as so self-obsessed. Men are just not being judged in the same way. They're never going to be annoying in the same way.

(On her parents' differing religious backgrounds) There was no one specific belief but a kind of looser spiritual believing in just about everything. I think there's something spiritual in a very day-to-day, mundane existence. It's impossible to articulate, and it's happening now, almost like a perverse secret. . . That's always sort of fascinating to me.

I feel very blessed that I can be good to myself in that delicate, creative way. It's good to nurture yourself, and it's good for the work, because it's always got room to grow.

[regarding Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)] When I was going through my first movie, I was going through a really bad breakup. It was rough on me. But I was in this state where everything was kind of science-fictional. My whole world was upside down. It felt like a murder had taken place. I was alive. And he was alive. But it felt like something had been murdered.

[on "The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society" by The Kinks] It seems on the surface to be almost cartoony and silly, but actually it's quite sad. Each song is a complete world with characters and locations. Big Sky is the song of the album, the one that makes me proud to be human. I listen anytime except when I'm writing: too many words.

[on David Bowie, the musician she would most like to be] His voice is very matter of fact, poignant without any filigree. Self-inventing, daring, and my wife would be Iman.