Miriam Shor

I feel like a lot of women have been questioning their role in their workplaces and society, opportunities that they may have missed or haven't spoken up for.

My philosophy is to eat as healthy as I can whenever I can, but not to beat myself up when I don't.

I drink as much water as I can when I remember.

If it's truly a passion, and it's truly something you believe in, then you need to do it.

I think about that with kids - you want to do everything for them, but you realize if you do everything, and you make it easy on them, they won't learn anything, and then they will walk around life needing their mamas all the time, and that isn't attractive.

I do feel like, especially nowadays, we are inundated with the message that, 'Oh my God, you aren't making your own clothes? You didn't make your own bread? And you also don't have a career, and you don't look unbelievable, and you have 5 pounds on your frame? Where is your book that you haven't published yet?'

You can't just wait for everybody to give you approval - you will just be waiting.

I live near Thompson Square Park, and there are a lot of colorful people I see in the park - a lot of different personalities and homeless people - you get to know them. And every now and then, there is suddenly someone who is no longer around, and you're just like, 'Wow,' but you never really know what happened to them.

It is hard to be unhappy in a gay bar where everyone's singing show tunes! In fact, I've spent many a night in those kind of places - in that particular place, actually - Marie's Crisis: it's truly a New York establishment.

I always like things to be as complicated as possible. I don't like an easy ending. I don't like when all the pieces get tied up. As a viewer who loves stories and storytelling, that annoys me.

When I gave a direction to an actor in the show, I know their whole journey better than a guest director could know it.

As the director, it's just a constant stream of meetings where you meet with all of the creatives who make all of the decisions for every part of the episodes. You're also scouting for locations, deciding on the locations, meeting with your first associate director; mine was Jennifer Truelove. She's one of my favorite people on the planet.

Not every director does this, but I did: I made a list of every shot you're going to set up for every scene in the script.

Your job as a director is to study the show, understand the show, understand the vibe, the tone, the characters.

The idea that you won't have a job is a real fear that people go through, so when people talk about jobs and say, 'I'm gonna create jobs!' or, 'There's gonna be a loss of jobs,' those are just words. But the reality of someone actually losing their job - I mean, it's their entire life for most people in this country.

What I love about Encores! is that it's a tremendous amount of work in a short amount of time, but it's just so festive and so celebratory and fun. It harkens back to the old days of just getting together and putting on a show.

Eating good food is, to me, one of life's greatest joys, and I will never punish myself for it.