“Chick flick is not a term used to praise a movie. Nobody says 'it's a great chick flick.' It's a way of being derisive. I'm not clear why it's ok to do it.”

“For me, the movies I like are all independent. And getting an independent feature made, it's like you get down to the selling organs part, and it just loses some of its luster.”

“I call myself a feminist, not a feminist filmmaker. If somebody asked me if I had a feminist sensibility it would be pretty hard to deny, but is it the theme of my work? Not necessarily. I'm interested in a lot of things.”

“I don't think any studio - it was a long shot at the time - but I don't think any studio in a million years would make 'Thelma and Louise' right now. But there's so many other kinds of movies they won't make right now.”

“I like writing flawed women, and being one, it's something I feel I can write with some veracity and authority.”

“I love to start characters in a place where you think you know them. We can make all kinds of assumptions about them and think they have no redeeming qualities, but like everyone, they're complex.”

“I think of feminism as more of a political ideology.”

“I think this happens to a lot of people, men and women, where you reach a point in your life and all of a sudden realize that things have changed. You suddenly realize that people are coming up behind you, that maybe somebody might want to replace you for less money.”

“I tried to get a baseball movie made a couple of years ago and I don't think it didn't happen because I was a woman, but because sports movie don't sell internationally.”

“If the same energy went into marketing movies to women as they do on the other demographics we might see more of a spike.”

“I'm almost numb to misogyny at this point. It's just everywhere.”

“Movie studios are owned by giant corporations. They care about money; they don't care about movies.”

“Nashville is the place where I first realized how impossible it is to look at someone and know what is inside them, what special something they possess.”

“One of the magical things about Nashville is just how many incredibly talented people are here and the way they support each other.”

“One of the reasons I wanted to do a show about Nashville in Nashville was because when I lived here, the hardest thing to go out and hear was country music. Country was taking place inside the studio and it was an export.”

“People always ask me about 'Girls' with this kind of hesitation. What do I think of it? I love it. It's awesome. I get a lot of Where do you come down on this? I come down on the side of 'Yay, Lena Dunham. Congratulations. I'm jealous.' She's doing something so fantastic. Maybe it's not for everybody, but it certainly is for me.”

“Political stories in general are tough. They just don't appeal to as wide an audience.”

“The movie I've watched a million times is 'A Face in the Crowd,' directed by Elia Kazan, starring Andy Griffith and Patricia Neal. I first saw this movie, I guess I was in my early 20s. I'd never heard of it, and somebody told me about it, and I watched it and was just completely jaw-droppingly shocked at how current it was.”

“There are so many screenwriters with incredible stories to tell, so I hope there will be some kind of shift in the business where very few types of movies are now made by the studios. There needs to be different budgets for different audiences; not everything having to be a huge opening weekend.”

“To me, feminism is such a simple description: it's equal rights, economic rights, political rights, and social rights.”

“What I'm not about is exploiting women.”

“When people know I wrote 'Thelma and Louise,' they don't want to mess with me.”

“When you look around right now, Nashville is kind of going through another changing of guard; you're watching the Martina McBrides and the Faith Hills and all of them that have been the big stars for the last however many years, and the next generation is coming in: Miranda Lambert, Carrie Underwood, those girls.”

“Whenever I've seen shows or films set here, they just don't feel like the real Nashville to me.”

“You're allowed to make things for women on television and there's not like... you don't have to go through the humiliation of having made something directed at women. There it's just accepted, whereas if it's a feature, it's like 'So, talk to me about chick flicks.'”

“You're allowed to make things for women on television, and there's not like... you don't have to go through the humiliation of having made something directed at women. There it's just accepted, whereas if it's a feature, it's like 'So, talk to me about chick flicks.' It's like... I don't think you want to hear my opinion about this.”