Quotes from Lisa Cholodenko

Boundaries get blurry and identities can get lost easily. It's easy to take your partner for granted.

Great actors help. Every project is different. Sometimes it's completely open, and I've been able to cast who I've wanted. And then sometimes people want a certain kind of actor.

L.A. is conventional to a hyper-real degree. It's plastic.

I think invariably when you are dealing with relationships, the films really center on that, and the plot is really born out of that. That's the most core part of a relationship: intimacy, I think, whether it's expressed or not.

I feel like I've been observed as an individual more than a gay person, or as a filmmaker with a certain point of view rather than a lesbian filmmaker with a gay point of view.

There is a core value I wanted to illuminate: No matter what kind of family you have - straight, gay, married, single parent, separated, no kids, two kids, 20 kids, whatever - we all go through the human comedy. But if the bonds are strong enough, and the desire is there, you can get to the other side, still together and still a family.

I have enjoyed writing my own stuff, and it's been a privilege to be able to scrap some money together to be able to make films from my own scripts.

There's a lot of technology out there to help people have children in different ways, and later in life, for better or worse.

I got exposed to art-house cinema and foreign films. I was from L.A., so it was a film culture that I didn't know about.

At the base of it, my gut instinct tells me that there's a kind of fundamental misogyny in the culture. There just is. You know, there's just a weird anxiety around women.

I'm in my mid-40s now, and I came out in 11th grade, so I must have been 17. So that's quite a long time ago, and the temperature and the culture was different.

This whole Oscar thing is so political. It's about how much a film grosses, and who's in it, and how well it has been promoted.

I feel like if you feel good about a script, and you feel confident about your ability to direct and just capture it right, it's all just, really, really in your favor there.

The source of so much of my anxiety in life and the tensions in my relationship is my anxiety about my kid. It's all very abstract and unfounded and ungrounded.

I think for any artist, your voice is always evolving. For me, the constant is finding a tension or balance between drama and comedy.

I think I'm interested in these kinds of character dramas, psychological dramas, domestic dramas, whatever you want to call them - comedy dramas.

I think when you're writing films that just come fresh out of your own imagination - I think probably anyone who's done that, there are certain themes or styles.

I had a great love affair in high school and let myself have that love affair and tried to keep it to myself.

Wendy and I both wanted kids, but since we were pushing 40, the clock was ticking.

I have a deal with HBO to develop television, and I am also developing a movie called 'The Abstinence Teacher,' which is based on a book by Tom Perrotta.

I get asked why there aren't more female directors all the time. I'm kind of reluctant to talk about it. That's not because I think the question is irrelevant or stupid. It's just that there are so many mitigating factors.

I just think self-satisfied people ignore certain signs about other people.

I was very influenced by the films of the '70s.

I tend not to be so attracted to films that force me into an intellectual place over an emotional one.