I hear that 5 o'clock whistle in my mind like Fred Flintstone and I have to stop. I'm also not much of a morning writer. I have a sweet spot from about 11am to 4pm. But I really work during that time.

One nice thing about being a woman in Hollywood is that the women tend to be very close-knit. All of us writers and directors know each other and cling to each other for safety and support, and it's really a completely different vibe than the men experience out here, where they're all trying to murder each other.

I've been so lucky - I worked with Jason Reitman twice, who has always been a really strong advocate for my voice, and has always really respected the scripts that I've brought him and is just the coolest.

I have never been an ambitious person, and my participation in this industry is a fluke, but only male writers can afford to be coy and self-deprecating.

The best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are.

I appreciate the positivity of those 'year of the woman' articles - it's good to get that energy out there - but at the same time, in Hollywood it's not happening yet.

It doesn't matter if they're in front of the camera or behind the camera. I know women who are producers who are surviving on nothing but juice and almonds.

The primary job for women in Hollywood is still super-attractive actress. That is the most high-profile women's job in Hollywood.

Honestly, this will never happen because she's so much classier than me, but I would love to work with Sofia Coppola.

I am actually able to do other things. I'm not just this writer.

In the past, I'll admit, I've enjoyed being compared to the protagonists in my screenplays.

I had the experience last year of directing my first feature while I had a 1-year-old son and while I was also pregnant, so I am now well aware of the difficulties women who are rearing children face when they're also trying to make headway in mainstream of film.

I actually have two children now, and sometimes I wonder if that's it. Because they do make writing and directing more complicated and more difficult, especially now that they're very young.

I had written the script for Juno and apparently Steven Spielberg had read it. I can't just call him Steven, that's weird... Mr. Spielberg had read it and he liked it. He asked me if I would write this television show for him and I said, 'Yeah!'

I'm not an especially highbrow person, but I have always loved small, quirky, edgy movies.

Everybody knows that I'm not a snob when it comes to pop culture, obviously. I love reality shows.

Somebody asked me earlier if I thought it was really important to tell stories about women's struggles. And I said yes, but at the same time, it's also important to tell stories about women's triumphs, women being slackers, women being criminals, women being heroes.

You know, it shouldn't just be about women as heroic figures overcoming things, it just needs to be about women in general getting the opportunity to play a multitude of roles, telling a multitude of stories - just to express human experience from a woman's perspective. I hope, someday, we can get to that point. I'm all about representation.

I want Maggie Gyllenhaal. I don't know why. I don't think she necessarily looks like me or acts like me, I just think she's a cool actress and she could play me, so there you go.

I do not quote my own movies. I think I would be pretty insufferable if I did.

I don't think coolness used to be such a commodity among adults. And now it is.

I've come to find more satisfaction and enjoyment in writing screenplays over the years because that's what I do primarily now.

And I think I'm an adrenaline junkie, and there's nothing that will spike your adrenaline more than sitting in a theater and listen to an audience react to something you've written.

That's also why comedy and horror are my two favorite genres of film to write, because you get these outbursts of emotion from people, laughter and shock, and it's really thrilling, and I like to be thrilled.

It's possible that I've matured as a writer, and I hope I've matured emotionally, but I always find myself revisiting these adolescent scenes.

People don't have these tidy little redemption arcs in reality the way they do in movies.

People are more interested in being visible than they are in loving other people.

I just go about my life. I'm a mom, I drive an SUV, I go to the grocery store every day. I'm definitely not a celebrity. I always say that I'm a celebrity-adjacent.

I'm one of the people that were divorced by 30, which is apparently a growing group... Obviously it's something that affects you forever. It's going to be interesting to see in ten, twenty years what kind of lasting effect young divorce has on the people that are doing it because it's becoming more and more common.

Unfortunately I don't live by a Target now, so I just go to a regular Starbucks as opposed to a Starbucks nested inside a Target, which is my ideal situation. That works out for me. I like that white noise, those interruptions, and the people around me.

I just want to be able to keep my house and pay for my son's school tuition in Los Angeles.

I spent a lot of time staring at the clock in school, so I have that kind of personality.

You know, I did not like being famous. It was a stressful and ugly time, and I'm glad it's over.

I think it's great when writers get recognition; it doesn't happen very often. I just don't want that writer to be me. Let it be Aaron Sorkin or, you know, somebody good.

There's a weird cloud around you when you're recognizable. It was a brief window for me. I think you have to have a pathological need for attention of any type, negative or positive, to thrive in that kind of situation. And I only want compliments.

There's probably no experience more alienating than fame, other than a terminal illness, where you actually find yourself in a situation that nobody around you can relate to.

Judy Blume excels at describing how it feels to be invisible. So how poetic is it that Blume herself is suddenly everywhere?

It's actually much harder to develop a TV show than I had anticipated.

Los Angeles is often described as the nadir of vapidity, a smog-choked space cradle.

There's something magical about spending a Sunday night watching real people at a deli, then watching fake people pretending to be real on TV, then engaging in (arguably) false interaction with (arguably) real people on the Internet. Never at any prior point in time has this been possible.

For me, I am a huge fan of Sofia Coppola and Lynn Shelton. I love Lena Dunham, like everybody else. I love Kathryn Bigelow.

Even though I am in this weird position of being a semi-recognizable screenwriter, which isn't that common, at the same time, I'm not an actress. I'm pretty isolated.

You make a first impression and people never forget it. If people want to think of me as the wacky 'Juno' lady forever, I could think of worse ways to be labeled.

I would never consent to a lame publicity stunt at a time when I already want to hide.

I've always been a writer, I've always been a storyteller, but I never thought about screenwriting.

Hollywood is a perpetual summerland, a temperate, godless yaw where the very word 'season' has been co-opted by television executives. There are few harbingers of winter here.

When I was a kid, I attended a small Catholic school in a south suburb of Chicago.

The public's appetite for frothy, flippant blondes has waned, but Paris Hilton still fascinates me.

Tabloid photos capture people at their most self-conscious and disoriented; in real life, Paris Hilton is like an elegant paper crane.

The fashion industry isn't merely content to encase my meaty flanks in skintight denim. Oh, no! That denim also has to be white, a color that attracts ketchup, wine, garlic aioli, and any other foodstuffs I might otherwise be able to enjoy if I wasn't wearing ridiculously tight pants.