Amy Heckerling

Unfortunately, if you're going to say anything that's in your head, you're going to get some kickback.

I wasted most of my 20s being so frustrated I forgot to have fun. I was so concentrated on one thing - 'Must make movie.'

For me, New York is home because that's where I'm from.

The Bronx always seemed very dreary to me.

I wasn't bat mitzvahed.

The building in the Bronx where I grew up was filled with mostly Holocaust survivors. My two best friends' parents both survived the camps. Everyone in my grandparents' building had tattoos. I'd go shopping with my grandparents, and the butcher, the baker, everybody in the whole neighborhood had tattoos.

I didn't go to Hebrew school.

I attended Art & Design High School, and at one point, you had to write about what you wanted to be when you grew up. I wrote that I wanted to be a writer for 'Mad' magazine.

To tell you the truth, in the old Jewish shtetls, if your husband died, sometimes they'd have you marry the brother, and my grandparents were actually stepbrother and stepsister.

When I did 'Fast Times,' I felt very close emotionally to the characters. I liked those characters because they all had to work, so they were dealing with adult problems even though they were very immature, and I could relate to that.

I like being able to tape things and then having them home waiting for you, but just dealing with the Time Warner Cable people will drive you insane.

With electronics, they just get smaller and smaller.

Everything you try to do in life, of any value, people are going to be saying, 'No, no, no.' You have to have the ability to not see that or hear that.

In one respect, I like the freedom of using all the people that I love instead of being dictated by the studio to use the hot person of the moment.

There's a whole vampire community online - those are some crazy people.

When you have somebody writing or acting for you, you have to be free to have them hate you so you can get your ideas across without worrying.

I always get hats but never have the nerve to wear them. Hats are a thing that are really stylish, but you have to have the confidence to pull it off.

I spent my entire youth in front of a TV watching old movies, and as soon as I was able to get a subway pass, when I was 14, I joined the Museum of Modern Art and was there all weekend watching old movies.

NYU was my comfort zone.

When I was 20, I had these furrowed lines between my brows because I was always angry. And I was 20. I don't think that was a mark of age; it was just my personality.

I've always tried to figure out what people think of themselves and what they think they're projecting.

A teenager has to decide what they're going to do with their life, and that's one of the most important decisions that you'll make.

I'd rather see what young people are going through than see things explode.

I can't stomach most of the movies about women.

For my money, the movies of the '70s were just amazing.

Sometimes people say, 'Oh you did one of my favorite movies,' and I will ask them what the other one is, and it's always something that I totally hate.

Over-the-knee socks remind me of the 1920s, silent films, and the stars of the era who wore the rolled-down stockings. They sort of referenced that in 'Cabaret,' when Liza Minnelli was singing 'Mein Herr,' and I love the way she looks in that scene.

I'm just not happy with Hollywood.

I'm real excited by a phone where I can look at my kid and talk to her face.

I really live in my own kind of universe.

I don't think people know 'Nosfuratu.'

I wanted to do something in the style of a comedy of manners.

I wanted to do something about a really optimistic character: a character who was so optimistic, no one could burst her bubble.

I still find it interesting that there could be a point between a young guy and a girl when they decide to hold hands as they walk down the block. At some point, they decide to make the leap from pushing and insulting each other to doing something tender and possessive and showing the world that.

Hollywood is the dream factory, and no one dreams about older women.

I just wanted to do something about the teenage experience; it's such a wonderful and horrible time of life.

I sometimes think it's better to go with a bad movie that is true to a certain point of view than to take something and make people try to like it when they're not supposed to.

There are a lot of people in Beverly Hills who come from the Middle East, who are very much a part of the Beverly Hills fabric, and their kids grew up with the privileges of Beverly Hills. And yet they still have to deal with a lot of the prejudice against them for being foreign-born.

I don't know what goes on behind my back... I always feel like, if you don't have anything good to say, then don't say anything.

Bitterness is so ugly. I don't want to go there.

You could go out with a camcorder tomorrow and make a movie with virtually no money, but promoting a tiny low-budget movie costs $20 million. And the money they spend on the big movies is astronomical.

A lot of my movies were completely destroyed by the censors, who can be pretty arbitrary. They're not completely fair with how they treat one person vs. another.

If you look at all the pictures of women in magazines, everybody's got a forehead that looks like a billboard. Completely blank.

I've always hated the way Hollywood has portrayed accountants. They're always little nerd balls, wimpy, afraid of everything. Growing up with accountants, I don't see them that way.

Babies don't need fathers, but mothers do. Someone who is taking care of a baby needs to be taken care of.

Bitterness is so ugly.

When new things come along, some people always want the newest of the new - 'This is what I've been waiting for!' - and some people don't want or need the change - 'I like my old one.'

Everybody who worked in film misses holding pieces of film, holding it up to the light, and seeing exactly where something was image-wise.

Some women are great, and you wouldn't have been able to get to where you are without them, and others are doing what they can to undermine you.

Body image - what we're supposed to look like - is made so unattainable that all girls are put in this position of feeling inferior. That's a horrible thing.