The hardest thing in the world I now know is to hold in your head that it is okay to think that you are right but not to think so necessarily because everyone who disagrees with you is wrong or stupid or duped or bad.

My advice to female directors is not to wait until you feel like your ideas have been pre-certified or until you think youve gotten some approval for them. Then its too late! Follow your gut. Thats hard to do but the only way to be original.

News reports dont look at the land that existed before a war and the land that exists after a war. Reporting on war is a snapshot in time.

When men talk about war the stories and terminology vary – its this battle these weapons this terrain. But no matter where you go in the world women use the same language to speak of war. They speak of fire they speak of death

I think if we understand better the impact of war on women and children we might be more careful about the wars we start.

I love everybody. I think my totem animal is a Labrador Retriever.

I was a bit of a lost lamb in my twenties trying to find my higher calling.

Theres no one on this earth taken less seriously in a leadership context than a young woman – everything is against you.

Ive heard people say in the U.N. community among mediators they dont like women as mediators because theyre too quick to compromise.

Having traveled to parts of the world where war has done its usual nasty work on peoples lives I have come to develop a particular hatred for the shape the look the sound of the AK-47.

When you make your first film at 47 and anybody but your mother goes to see it to me thats a miracle.

The greater good is achieved by not only telling people what they need to know but also filling them with a sense of empathy and love.

The fact is funnily enough that the people who seem to be most committed to causes also seem to be least invested in anyone actually talking to each other.

Combat is a piece of war. But war is a totalizing uncivilized experience.

Film is the medium for communicating not just ideas but things of the heart.

We have a world minus a whole lot of talent that has stepped out of contention for leadership only because they dont want to seem too aggressive too smart unattractive or too male.