I think in art, but especially in films, people are trying to confirm their own existences.

As long as I can say what it is that I need to say, then I'll fit whatever I'm trying to say around a melody.

When I was producing on my own, I was doing it in order to - in a very patriarchal entertainment industry, let alone planet - very much hell-bent on trying to prove to myself, if nothing else, that I could do it as a woman.

Aging gracefully is supposed to mean trying not to hide time passing and just looking a wreck. Don't worry girls, look like a wreck, that's the way it goes.

Good writers are monotonous, like good composers. They keep trying to perfect the one problem they were born to understand.

What we see is what they're trying to sell us. It's not true nostalgic as much as it is repeating old material because it's less expensive than new material.

I've been doing everything I can to reach out and understand why people voted against me. They were trying to send a message. I have to be more sensitive in the way I express myself, and I have to be more thoughtful in the positions I take.

I was surrounded by nature and trying to come to terms with this blissful nature versus the inhumane mentality of war. People were being deluded by someone using the word peace.

Orlando's a part of me. The next guy's a part of me. And the next guy's a part of me. That's all I'm trying to do, is tell cool stories that people can relate to.

What we should be trying to do is to encourage people to establish private retirement accounts and help them take pressure off the Social Security system.

Communism is trying to take the world by force. But God will take the world by love.

I'm trying to read more dead people because I keep having to read stuff for juries and so forth.

I'm trying to make sure that there's comedy as well as sadness. It makes the sadness more memorable.

I am in Boston right now, in fact, to do work at the New England Historical Genealogical Library, where I'm trying to finish up tracing my lineage back to the seventeenth century.

The process of composition, messing around with paragraphs and trying to make really good prose, is hardwired into my personality.