"My parents are amazing. When I said I wanted to go into film, they didn't understand it, but they were incredibly supportive. But growing up, I absolutely did have that feeling of, "Wow, somebody just gave me up." That was infused in The Secret Life of Bees too - the protagonist wanting unconditional love from her dead but much-imagined mother."

“Iran is a huge country and much, much more sophisticated than most people imagine... It certainly has the potential to be at least the way Turkey is to most Americans.”

Source : "US-Iran Relations in the Age of the Ayatollah". Interview with Jon Letman, mronline.org. October 4, 2010.

“Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren’t satisfied in God and what He gives. We hunger for something more, something other.”

“Half my life is full of sorrow, Half of joy, still fresh and new; One of these lives is a fancy, But the other one is true.”

Source : Adelaide Anne Procter (1861). “Legends and Lyrics: A Book of Verses”, p.76

“But most hearts say, I want, I want, I want, I want. My heart is more duplicitous, though no twin as I once thought. It says, I want, I don't want, I want, and then a pause. It forces me to listen...”

“Freedom, remember, is not the same as liberty.”

Source : Katherine Anne Porter (2008). “Katherine Anne Porter: Collected Stories & Other Writings”, p.991, Library of America

“The growing wealth aquired by them corporations never fails to be a source of abuses.”

“I think people have common sense and can tell what's real, what's right or what's wrong and work it out.”

Source : "Piper dreams" by Barbara Ellen, www.theguardian.com. September 7, 2008.

“The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.”