My goal is not to make popular things. My goal is to make the things I love as popular as I can make them.

I like jeans, but I think in 100 years it's going to be crazy when we look back at the fact that everyone, every day for about 60 years straight, wore stiff blue pants as their default. Why?

Different people have different styles, but there is an opportunity as a director to be a writer in every moment, with every visual cue and every piece of production design. Everything is a decision, and everything can be obsessed over.

It feels as though a very disproportionate number of main characters are writers, because that's what the writer knows. Fair enough. But nothing bothers me more in a movie than an actor playing a writer, and you just know he's not a writer. Writers recognize other writers. Ethan Hawke is too hot to be a writer.

You learn more from defeats and it makes you hungry to go and improve the next time. That's the way I have dealt with things during my whole career.

I didn't become a caddie because I wanted to be a caddie. I was a caddie because that was how I could make money and feed myself. It was work. It was a dignified job.

Early on in my career, I was often the only woman in the room, writing for shows like 'Late Night with David Letterman,' 'The Simpsons,' 'Newhart,' and 'Coach,' and sometimes I'd feel like I didn't belong.

A good part of my leadership skills is crafted from learning from experiences early in my career that were not positive experiences.