I wrote the script to 'Lady Bird,' and it really came out of a desire to make a project about home - like, what the meaning of home is, and place. I knew Sacramento very well, obviously, growing up there, and I felt like the right way to tell a story of a place was through a person who's about to leave it.

I just don't feel like I've seen very many movies about 17-year-old girls where the question is not, 'Will she find the right guy' or 'Will he find her?' The question should be, 'Is she going to occupy her personhood?' Because I think we're very unused to seeing female characters, particularly young female characters, as people.

I'm really interested in trying to tell stories about women that don't involve romantic components. That's so much a part of the way we feel about female characters and their needs that it feels like it's built in - but I'd like to find a way that it's not. There are so many more stories than that.

When you're writing a screenplay, it's like you're dreaming the film for yourself again and again and again until it becomes almost like a memory before you make it.

Feelings aroused by the touch of someone's hand, the sound of music, the smell of a flower, a beautiful sunset, a work of art, love, laughter, hope and faith - all work on both the unconscious and the conscious aspects of the self, and they have physiological consequences as well.

I think great art comes from being open and creative with somebody, and of course, if feelings start getting involved in that, it can either make things fantastic or really messy.

Juilliard definitely emphasizes the theater. They don't train - at all really - for film acting. It's mostly process-oriented, pretty much for the stage.

I live in words. I like looking at things, but I don't have a strong visual imagination.