I'm trying to make people understand: yes, women are oppressed in 'The Handmaid's Tale.' But the men are also oppressed, too. It's just a very scary world for anyone.

Real people - everyone is not just one thing.

I really hate having to put 'female' in front of any title, because it puts us in some kind of weird category for handicapped people or something.

The instant feeling I had after I gave birth was you couldn't get that baby in my hands fast enough.

Normally, if I would read in a script that there's mostly flashbacks and mostly voiceover, I would run as far away as possible.

We have this attitude in America of, 'Someone else is going to fix the problem.' That's what the majority of Americans have. Or, 'I'm just going to go online and sign this petition, and that will take care of it.' That's doesn't do it.

Funny enough, the most discrimination I've ever gotten as a woman in this industry has been from other women.

I think I subconsciously knew you needed life experience to direct, and the best films are directed by people who have really lived, with exceptions like Orson Welles, who just burst out of the gate. There are prodigies like that, but for me, personally, I thought I needed life experience.

In TV, you are much more likely to see the episode closer to the script as written - in terms of the order of the scenes - than you would in a movie, and here's why: you don't have as many days to edit. You have 10 to 12 weeks or more to edit a feature, and you have four days to edit TV. That's a huge difference.

I would rather be hired solely for my talent, not just to fill a quota. I also don't want to shoot just any studio movie just to say I'm shooting studio movies - for me, quality of the material comes first, and if eventually that leads to a really great studio project, then that's a bonus.

I like movies as a viewer that challenge me to actually think rather than spoon feed everything to me.

I do think it's unfair for women who get pegged with creating fare for other women.

In my 20s, I was too shy to reach out to successful DPs and directors for an internship or to shadow them. I see young people nowadays doing that all the time. I think that experience would have been cool.

Whenever a woman wields a gun in a film, it ends up looking like they're trying to be sexy rather than they actually know what they're doing.

A sad truth I learned as a DP starting out was that it doesn't matter how beautiful I make it if the story and performance are not there. That should be number one.

The way I'm used to telling a story is by looking through the viewfinder and being really close to the actors.

'The Handmaid's Tale' is a very special story.

Sometimes you come up with an idea when you're going out for a job, and then when you actually get into dissecting the world, you end up changing your approach, just because that's the way art goes sometimes.

I have a lot of brothers and male cousins. I grew up in an informal, jokey environment.

I don't want to come in and do something that's been done before. You know, for me, it's not that I wouldn't come in and do a sequel to something, but it's only if I can bring something new to the table and I'm not following an extremely strict path.

There are obviously issues in our industry. That starts at the top with studio execs who - not just men - don't believe a woman could handle a huge franchise or big action movie.

Ultimately, the idea of being able to escape and lose myself in a new world every time I go to 'work' was too appealing to ignore.

There are a lot of women who direct in a way that is even more masculine sometimes than men - and that's not a bad thing, either.

Directing is not about gender. Directing is individual to the actual individual. From woman to woman, directing is completely different. It's about giving more than half the population a chance to express themselves, you know what I mean? It doesn't always mean it's going to be more sensitive.