DAWN STEEL

The men I worked for didn't look at me as having any gender at all. They regarded me more as a workhorse.

I'd like my epitaph to read 'Given the amount of time she had, she did the best job she could.' Also that I'm a nice person... and a good mother.

Historically, Vietnam movies have been profitable. All of them. 'Platoon,' 'Full Metal Jacket,' 'Apocalypse Now,' 'The Deer Hunter.' You're looking at movies that have been not pretty successful, but very successful. The foreign numbers have been extraordinary.

What sets Iris Stevenson apart is her success in a system that in no way supports her - with the hardest possible children to convert.

Having money is better than not having it, but I've been poor, and I've survived.

I don't know that I would say abrasive. In some ways, I was curt because there's an unbelievable amount to accomplish in a day, and maybe I was insensitive considering the pressures and responsibilities of these jobs.

If you can market smut and toilet paper, you can market movies.

Working together is the quickest road to marital problems.

You have to persevere, you have to just not give up, and you have to know what you want. You have to be able to see your dream.

You do sequels because they are tent poles. They open well, and they hold the tent up. But in between, you make a movie you respect.

Some children's music is aimed just at kids, and it can be very childlike.

In some ways I was curt because there's an unbelievable amount to accomplish in a day.

If I can do it, anyone can do it.

I had an obsession with underarm shields - pointy ones, round ones, full ones, half ones.

I would walk into my office, and I would close the door, and I would say, 'I won't cry, I won't cry, I won't cry'... At least, I wasn't going to let them see me cry.

It hurt me deeply, this reputation as tough, hard, mean.

I don't want my child to have unhealthy values.

I think women's relationships with other women are very complicated and depend on their relationships with their mothers. Mine was fraught with problems. So I didn't necessarily trust women for a long time.

It's about passion, and if somebody is passionate about a development deal, they're going to get it made.

I felt that if I shared the lessons that I learned - both the good ones and the bad ones - that I might make the climb a little less painful for other women.

I've gone far in the movie business, but no matter how far I go, every time I pick up the phone to call Tom Hanks or Robin Williams, I wonder if they'll call me back. And you know what? Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't.

If the doors are going to close on me, it's a little late.

We manufacture a culture in the movie business, and whatever we put out creates a dark side and a bright side, too.

I was the first studio executive to meet with Sean Penn after 'Taps' in 1981. I was anxious to develop things with him when nobody knew who he was.

Foreign revenues are tremendously important, but foreign audiences are dying for American movies, not for films they could make themselves.