Nicole Holofcener Quotations

If a woman gets insomnia, you never know where you're going to find her furniture the next morning. It's primal. We have so little we can control, but we can perfect the way our room looks.

Filming is a funny combination of having a good time and not being able to wait until its over.

If you keep the situations real, the characters' behavior will be real and honest, too. If they're suddenly robbing a bank and exchanging snappy dialogue, well, I wouldn't even know how to write that.

I'm not crazy about having my picture taken. I'd rather talk my head off.

I'm somebody's ex-wife, and I did things that drove him nuts. And now I'm somebody's girlfriend, for many years, and I've got different things that drive him nuts.

When I hear that a project takes place out of town, the material better be terrific, and it has to come at the right time. My kids are getting older, so it's getting easier, but being a mother - it's a difficult thing to juggle.

Catherine Keener really gets me. She and I have such a shorthand together.

I rarely need career advice because I don't have a career. No, that's not true. I can't really go far away while my kids are living with me.

I went to NYU for a year and a half, and I graduated from there and then years later went to Columbia for graduate school.

It's harder to take care of kids than it is to make a movie.

Hollywood is lacking realness in their female characters. I don't think I'm the only one who thinks that and wants to change it.

I always had good friends, but I did not feel like a cool girl, ever.

I definitely feel like a native New Yorker. My personality was formed there.

I don't think of myself in a political way, though I am definitely a feminist.

I have a stack of scripts that I've read - I'm in the lucky position where I get offered things - but I haven't wanted to direct many of them.

I hear people talk in my head, and I write it down. I choose where they live and how they dress to be real.

I would still encourage somebody, if they wanted to make a movie, to just go take a movie camera. That's clearly been shown to work.

I'll write a character with a certain actor in mind, but then once I start casting, I have to forget about who I pictured.

I'm a director, but I gotta have the hair, the makeup and the heels. My mother would be appalled if I didn't dress up.

I'm not a producer and I don't even know the places my producer goes to, thankfully.

If the script is right, I'm not above doing a movie with broad appeal.

My movies make a profit, but obviously not a fortune.

The fact that I get to write and direct my own personal story is an amazing thing.

The stories that I want to tell are completely, well, somewhat autobiographical. It's completely based on my own self-absorption issues and problems.

I don't have a drawer full of ideas. I kind of look around and take notes and wonder what could actually be a whole movie. And each time, I think I'm going to do it more commercial this time; I'm going to get a big budget and make it. But I always come up with some small idea.

I think I'm a good writer. I think I have my own voice, which is unique to everyone, everyone has their own voice; if they would just write from a vulnerable embarrassing place, it's going to be universal and it's going to be entertaining. Because everyone is the same and everyone is unique.

I think that sometimes, romantic comedies have to be really broad, and that the plot of people falling in and out of love or whatever is not enough. Enough Said had that stuff, but I wanted it to be fun and funny while also grounded in reality.

I'm being photographed, worrying about my hair - and yet here I am, I've directed a feature film, why do I care about the way I look? Who cares? Does Tim Burton care? Does Joel Coen?

I'm still shooting on low budgets, though none of my movies has lost money, and I rarely get sent anything that stars a guy or is a thriller or is seriously dramatic. And I would love the opportunity to do those things.

I'm sure it's more difficult for women to make movies, especially because, in general, the kind of movies women want to make aren't necessarily going to be blockbusters. But you know, there are so few women in so many positions of power.

I'm willing to give up a little control but not a lot. So I say I want the money, but when push comes to shove, I'm not sure I'll be able to compromise in order to make the big studio movie. Maybe something in between would be okay, like a low-budget studio film.

To say you want to be a director is to risk sounding obnoxious, pretentious, arrogant, and I think women are more fearful of sounding that way than men are.

When I was going away to school, I had a friend who took a liking to my family just a little too much. We couldn't get her out of the house. It took me saying to my parents, 'I don't want her here. I'm feeling replaced.'

When I'm creating characters, I just want to create characters that I can relate to, and be as honest about them as people as I can be. That's what I want to see when I go to the movies.

Thrilled and petrified. Equal measures of both. Thrilled because I have a history with Sundance, which made this feel special and like a real honor. Petrified, I guess, because I think it's never good to go into a film with really high expectations. That can't be in my favor. That's not to say it won't meet them, but what if it doesn't? I hope people will have goodwill toward it.

Like any good actor, Jennifer just becomes this other person.

I don't feel like I focus that much on class issues. I'm more interested in stories about people who can feel like they belong, or don't belong. It's a lot like junior high school, unfortunately.

I think people are led by their representation a lot. I know there were a lot of mixed feelings about Jennifer taking my movie. Some were really supportive, and some people in her camp were very against it, like, 'You did your Good Girl !' It's so crazy; it's about a role, it's about a part.

We didn't have a lot of exteriors and we only had to deal with the media when we were shooting (outside). Jen was incredibly focused and professional.

When I saw (The Good Girl) that really sealed the deal for me.

You can't just assume that everybody is in the same situation. And with children we all have ideas about how money should be spent on them and it's not like there's an ugly thing in my life and between my friends it's just I thought it was a fun thing to write about.

The stories that I want to tell are completely, well somewhat autobiographical. It's completely based on my own self-absorption issues and problems.

I think having a good life prompts it... anybody who has a good life and looks around them sees the enormous disparity that exists in the world between those people who do and those that don't. I can't say we walk about our guilt a lot, though. If we do, it probably comes out in the form of self-loathing jokes. But it's a tough thing to wrap your head around... the have's and have not's in the world.

I have a boundary problem... I need to know when to give and when to back up. I'll help someone across the street and then into their homes and they'll start telling me all their problems... and it turns out they're insane and want to kill me. I've got to know when to stop!

People say to me all the time that I threw some money into some guy's coffee cup [by accident, thinking they were poor]. People do make the same sort of mistake. I've made attempts to volunteer that have been calamitous!

I thought I could make a sarcastic joke about it. But it's based on my own struggle with how much to give, how much it's really helping or not, and how foolish or not I feel. Giving sometimes backfires...

I wrote lots of scripts that never got made and they were terrible. I thought they were good at the time. You can't write two scripts and expect your career to take off. Keep writing. Be you. Be original. A lot of people go for a genre, which is fine if you can do that really well, but we all have such layered histories. We all come from a unique background. Write about your past, write about you. Or make stuff up, but make it about something that really matters.

Marriages are so complicated that no one person is the culprit. But, I am really interested in class without really realizing that I am. It's more the manifestations of different classes that interest me.

I hear people talk in my head and I write it down. I choose where they live and how they dress to be real. That person wouldn't wear that. That person wouldn't say that. She can't afford to live like that. All that bullshit that so many movies have in them. I don't want to see that.

I'd rather go for Scorsese and De Niro. I just think he was so much better.

The casting director on the movie made me aware of her. She told me what to watch Starter For Ten, which I did and thought she was great in. She was just so charming and beautiful. But I felt she could probably look plain if we tried. And when I subsequently met with her, I was so charmed by her vulnerability and sweetness. Those were two qualities that were the most important for that character.

If I had cast someone else who didn't have that kind of timing, it would have been leaden and one note. But Ann [Morgan Guilbert] made her really human and really funny without being caricatured or over the top. She feels like a real person.

Well, I tried being in front of the camera as a student and that was terrifying. But the press stuff about me growing up on his [film] sets has been exaggerated. I was an extra as a kid and I was also a PA [production assistant] on one of his movies, so I was lucky to get production experience. But I was nowhere near him.

But then male directors also have a hard time getting their movies made... not as hard as women but it's a tough time for any movie this size. And that particular movie [The Hurt Locker] was so specific. It couldn't hurt, of course, and I'm really glad for her, but I don't know how much it will change things, if at all. The film industry is still so sexist.

It's a struggle. It's really, really hard. I'm already nervous for my next one. You have to put more and more movie stars in movies these days. And of course, I would like to have more than $3million to make it. But, again, if that's what I was offered I wouldn't turn it down. I guess studios know that. But I'm one of the lucky ones, I guess.

I thought of the scene while writing scenes with Rebecca [Hall] and wrote it like an opening montage of showing where someone works. If you see a film about a car mechanic, you'd show the place they work and what they do. So, that's what I set out to do with Rebecca's character. I thought it probably wouldn't even make it into film but I ended up liking it.

That said, it was pretty awkward and a weird thing to shoot. Some women had a sense of humour about it and we'd laugh, but some were very serious and suspicious... like I might be doing something bad, or maybe they were just uncomfortable.

Yeah, people seem to really relate to it and feel moved by it. It's been the most positively received of all my movies so far. I don't know why. I like it just as much as I like my others, but people think this one is the best or the most interesting. I'll take it, though. I wouldn't want them to be saying my films are getting worse.

I guess I always knew going into the movie that casting that part would be difficult. Oliver just felt likeable. I felt it would be hard to dislike this man. I don't know why, but I'm sure other directors have felt the same when casting him. Oliver is goofy yet formidable, smart but likeable... I didn't want the character of Alex to be nasty or demonised. I wanted him to be struggling with his actions.

My grandma has said many of the things her character says. But she was much nicer! I made her meaner for dramatic purposes.

I never get tired of looking at her [Catherine Keener] and it always surprises me, despite how many hours of film I've shot on that face. She's fantastic. She does comedy and tragedy so equally well. She wears her feeling so on the surface for both. I try to stop myself from casting her but I just keep coming back to her. She's just so fantastic to work with.

Hollywood always likes to create a star.

If anything, I learned most from being a huge fan of his and watching movies like Annie Hall and Manhattan over and over again - that influenced the kind of movies that I wanted to make more than anything else.

What's the trick to writing a great female character? Make her human.