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.

Around '93, I had to get a couple of jobs. I had a job for a while working at a gym, just so I could work out for free, because I knew if I didn't exercise, I'd go crazy. It's the key to my mental health, actually.

All of us have an entrepreneur in us.

I want to see a world in which every entrepreneur has access to the resources he or she needs to succeed, and where through the power of supportive communities - that means you and me - every resource can be made available.

One of my favorite experiences in my career, certainly one of the most interesting characters I've ever played, was Simon Lee on 'The Event.' That was a show I was quite proud of and a character I really enjoyed playing. It was one of the most three-dimensional characters that was ever written for me and that I'd ever gotten to play.