My first camera job was filming workplace safety videos, which involved months of watching and videotaping people doing their jobs. I was hooked - from there, I wanted to know where they lived and the rest of their habits and desires.

The protagonist in 'Winter's Bone' was a really good role for a female. She was strong; she didn't have to conform to something or be a sidekick to any man. That's part of what you're responding to; it's a woman-centric situation. Her value in the film was not reliant on any man.

In Hollywood, only a female who's massively damaged is interesting.

I'm interested in the lives of Americans for whom the ways this culture has tried to define itself - that is, self-esteem defined by material wealth - they have nothing to do with that.

I don't care about the gold records and all of that stuff. I care about what we do onstage, and the joy that we bring to people.

Romance and novel paint beauty in colors more charming than nature, and describe a happiness that humans never taste. How deceptive and destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss!

You know, as I get older, personal happiness is all about love. It's all about love. You know, how I'm loved and how I love my family and my husband. That to me is happiness, when I feel like I am loved and I have a place to love deeply. That to me is happiness.

I think the most useful thing you can do as a writer is to reconstruct real life with all its color, hardship, joy, and intrigue. If you're interested in people, you honor them best, I think, by making the fullest possible picture of them. Your subjects may - and from my experience probably will - protest your portrait of them.