I want to make big movies - but I don't want to have to die a little death every single time I do. Until I meet the people or the studio or the business people who will let me do things a little bit more the way that I need to do them, I probably shouldn't be making big studio movies.

What kind of world is it if we allow people who are violent and do terrible things off the hook? What does that say about the world we're living in - it's like a world upside down, right?

It is important to know what audiences might expect from their genre movies, but I think it is also important to not give them everything they want. As a viewer, I think it can get pretty boring that way.

Horror, almost better than any of the other genres, pits the will to live against the will toward nihilism. I just think that's worth exploring. I don't know what is more important, actually, to explore than that very dynamic.

I think that there's something about short films that just kind of keeps your muscles sharp.

I think most women have to fight very hard for the opportunities they want, which isn't to say that most artists don't have to do that, male or female, but I'm definitely aware of just how difficult it is to find stories that interest me, particularly.

To me, sound is a crucial component to, really, any moviegoing experience, but particularly with suspense films or thrillers. I think you need the audience to become subtly really attuned to the soundscape in, like, this uncomfortable way.

I think being a young female star must be really, really pretty rough.

I don't necessarily believe that stories need closure. I just believe they need a beginning, middle, and end, but the end doesn't have to prevent us from continuing to grapple with the story at hand. It ideally should demand that we remain engaged with the story.

I think that idea that sort of our emotional self and our emotional life is a faucet that you turn on and off, and that we are in control of it entirely, that's a really appealing idea for a lot of people. But there are certainly the times where it's appealing to me, but it never quite works the way I hoped it would.

I don't get to make many features. It's not like that's something I can just snap my fingers and make happen.

Sometimes you realize that the thing an actor is asking for isn't exactly the thing they want. Maybe they're asking for more dialogue, or maybe they want a deep intellectual exploration of their role. But probably what they really need is encouragement.

For me, I guess I feel like the notion of 'feel good' entertainment... I'm all for it, but I just think you really, really, really have to earn it. I'm not sure I have a lot of movies in me where I see a world that earns it.

I just know I have so much to teach my child. And I just feel kind of like, what would our world be without mothers? What would our world be without mother love? I don't think we'd have a world.

I'm ultimately drawn to film many kinds of stories if they are sort of about unlocking the secrets of our human potential.

Making movies, even though it's a business, is also an art, and sometimes you don't hit the bull's-eye.

I'd like to be making more films more frequently, but I do find that making movies, for me, has proven to be an extremely challenging road. No movie is easy; no movie has come together quickly.

I had no shortage of wild times in my youth.

Always keep absorbing art and looking at paintings and reading books and watching movies in other languages, just getting to know the world at hand and the world of the past. It's important to keep absorbing the world and keep engaging with it, and often that means not thinking about movies and thinking about other things.

I would love to make lighter entertainments that have you sort of hopping and skipping and jumping out of the theater, but part of me just doesn't know how much I believe in that, as much as I want to.

For me, there's something about a certain kind of genre film that has real potency in its emotional landscape.

I have had to really grapple with the fact that, while I wish things could be different at times, I ultimately needed to experience the transformation that comes with pain and loss and sorrow.

I think there's a reason why some companies have such dismal records. It's not because they're clueless; it's because they systematically don't want to hire women.

I was in a very lucky position to be able to consider studio films and had decided to not go that route for a very long time until I read a script that I loved called 'Aeon Flux.'

For me, I feel like I don't see myself as all that different from other humans as a woman, but I'm surprised by how frequently I'm asked to see myself differently.

The short form, for those people who can master it - and I am by no means one of them - it is very admirable, because it is really hard to tell stories that can stick with the audience and still be between 5 and 30 minutes long. I think it's a real challenge.

'The Invitation' is a meditation on grief and loss carried within a suspense drama. At its core, it's about a dinner party gone horribly wrong and about the consequences of denying our pain.

I feel like, generally, the golden eras of cinema seem to be in moments of incredible political turmoil and strife and struggle.

I was lucky to work with Gamechanger Films, who are a consortium of investors financing films directed by women. This is a company that puts their money where their mouth is.

It's freeing to be able to consistently make creative decisions and ask creative questions of the team without feeling like, 'Does this make me vulnerable to getting canned?' That's a big part of being in a studio - they can always fire you.

Along with loving the script, the reason I did 'Aeon Flux' was because I needed the job, and I couldn't find $5 million to make a movie independently - after making a fairly successful movie for a million dollars.

To me, the thing that sets us apart from so many other animal species is our ability to ask questions, investigate, gather information, come to our own conclusions, and sometimes depart from the pack, sometimes move away from the tribe.

I think there is really something we need to examine about the notion of careers, and are women encouraged and given the same opportunities to have vital healthy careers in which they are challenged by certain things, they try new things, they struggle, maybe they stumble, maybe they fail, and then there's more room to succeed as well.

The people in the decision-making positions need to be thinking differently about who to hire, and looking more unsparingly at their choices. Why give this person a break over that person? Why give this person a second chance over that person? I do think that's where gender comes into play.

I would love to take another stab at really smart, speculative sci-fi - my first was a bit of a stumble. I look forward to getting another chance.

It's pretty gratifying to spend so long to make your first film and then feel like it got a lot of love - that was an incredible feeling. But there's something very distorting about that much attention. It felt like such a double-edged sword.

I think I was a pretty anxious dreamer, maybe a fundamentally lonely kid.

Day-to-day concerns really trumped big dreams for quite a while in my life. I was so freaked out about money. And until, honestly, I was in my early thirties and made 'Girlfight,' that anxiety was a real issue: How are you going to live? How are you going to survive?

It's important to tell meaningful stories and to find new ways to communicate those stories to people.

I've experienced a lot of successes. I've experienced a lot of failures. I've been able to get back up on my feet and keep going.

It's extremely instructive to realize that you cannot do everything. You need to delegate, to find experts, to consult with them. A big part of the job of directing is knowing when to take something on and when you shouldn't.

As bad as some movies can be, good movies are also possible, sometimes through the very heinous corporations we love to trash.

I'm strong-willed, but that doesn't mean I can't work with people if we're all in the mission of trying to make a good movie.

That's the most important thing for me is just figuring out how and if I'm growing as an artist.

There are times when I'm kind of anti-social, I'm just really shy, and I don't feel like I fit in, and I then attribute that to some emotional state that's crippling me.

If you look at most mainstream filmmaking, to be honest, some of these films aren't even asking questions anymore at all.

I get why we don't want to be in pain, but there's something very essential about what happens when we're in pain and some of the growth that can come from it if we stare at it straight in the face.

What might the world look like if we took some chances on the film-makers we might be afraid of?

Genre mechanics are really tricky because if you pay too much attention to the idea of rules of genre, it becomes pretty stale, pretty fast.

Reading the script for 'Jennifer's Body,' I just thought that here was a script that really exposes the horror between girls and friendships. I always sort of approached the film with that in mind first, and then thought about the crazy ways that that horror would express itself.