I guess all my films are about resolving conflicts - and they're all love stories. If they weren't, I couldn't make them.

Even if it's a thriller or a comedy, it's always a love story for me, and that's what I concentrate on, because the love stories are my surrogates for the argument: two people in conflict that see life differently.

When you rehearse a play, you spend four weeks with one goal in mind - to wean the actor away from you. You want the actor to become completely independent and to understand all the emotional and psychological moves within the character.

It's my job to motivate the audience to believe. I have to get them to suspend their judgment in favor of involvement.

When you've married someone who's been at war, there is nothing you can do that compares to that level of selflessness and bravery.

I was 21 and had been going out with my boyfriend for two years when I found out I was pregnant - despite being told by doctors that I was sterile. Jamie's father and I hadn't discussed marriage, and to me, it wasn't something to be entered into just to stop gossip.

Before I married, I had three theories about raising children and no children. Now, I have three children and no theories.

I'm about the only person in my family that's made it to 24 without being married. That's the way it works where I'm from. Most people, if you find someone to marry in high school, you do that, and if you don't find that, then you find someone in college.