Amy Heckerling

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.

I'm just not happy with Hollywood.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.