“I prefer things that are private, so I love recording and I love making films, as a filmmaker, because it uses every bit of what you have experienced or know, whether it’s graphics composition, decorating, psychology, storytelling, or whatever it is. It’s a wonderful thing.”

Directing is so interesting. You know, it just sort of encompasses everything that you see, that you know, that you’ve felt, that you have observed.

I don’t like talking about myself and I don’t like talking about the work.

I remember when I was 5 living on Pulaski Street in Brooklyn, the hallway of our building had a brass banister and a great sound, a great echo system. I used to sing in the hallway.

My nose was part of my heritage, and if I had talent to sing and to act, why wasn’t that enough?

I don’t know why it is that we need to denigrate, to knock down. It’s so sick.

When I was maybe 5 or 6 years old, the neighborhood girls would sit on the stoop and sing. I was known as the kid who had a good voice and no father.

I’ve been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good.

I’d started going to acting classes at 14, played ‘Medea’ at 15 and really wanted to be a classical actress.

My mother never really thought I could become anything.

In the music business, we all do different things, but we sit there and admire other people who can write a song differently or sing differently. It’s not so competitive.

Being a woman in music was fine, but when I wanted to direct, I was poking my head into a man’s world.

I hate tooting my own horn, but after Steven Spielberg saw Yentl, he said: “I wish I could tell you how to fix your picture, but I can’t. It’s the best film I’ve seen since Citizen Kane”.

I am a nice person. I care about my driver having lunch, you know.

I’ll see a celadon green room in an 18th century New Hampshire house and just fall in love. Colors stay in my head.

I only began to sing because I couldn’t get a job as an actress.

I never sing in the shower either.

When I was a kid I used to hate getting picked for team sports. It would be the fit and sporty guys over there.

It’s subjunctive history. You know, the subjunctive? The mood used when something may or may not have happened. When it is imagined.

I used to say I wanted to genuflect to a woman, put her up on a pedestal higher and higher, way up beyond my grasp…Then I’d find another one.

Nowadays, anyone who cannot speak English and is incapable of using the Internet is regarded as backward.

So I used formal techniques to make the film more perceptive emotionally.

What is a snob? A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses that to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery.

I’m stranded all alone in the gas station of love, and I have to use the self service pump.

After looking at Salomaybe, I don’t know who the hell the real me is. I think it’s closest now to the real me because for one thing, I’m used to this.