Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

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.

Amy Heckerling
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.

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

I didn't go to Hebrew school.

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

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.

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

I wasn't bat mitzvahed.

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

The Bronx always seemed very dreary to me.

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

For me, New York is home because that's where I'm from.

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

I wasted most of my 20s being so frustrated I forgot to have fun. I was so concentrated on one thing - 'Must make movie.'

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

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.

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

I still find it interesting that there could be a point between a young guy and a girl when they decide to hold hands as they walk down the block. At some point, they decide to make the leap from pushing and insulting each other to doing something tender and possessive and showing the world that.

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

I wanted to do something about a really optimistic character: a character who was so optimistic, no one could burst her bubble.

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

I wanted to do something in the style of a comedy of manners.

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

I don't think people know 'Nosfuratu.'

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

I really live in my own kind of universe.

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

I'm real excited by a phone where I can look at my kid and talk to her face.

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

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

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

I'm just not happy with Hollywood.

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

Sometimes people say, 'Oh you did one of my favorite movies,' and I will ask them what the other one is, and it's always something that I totally hate.

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

For my money, the movies of the '70s were just amazing.

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

I can't stomach most of the movies about women.

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

I'd rather see what young people are going through than see things explode.

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

A teenager has to decide what they're going to do with their life, and that's one of the most important decisions that you'll make.

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

Body image - what we're supposed to look like - is made so unattainable that all girls are put in this position of feeling inferior. That's a horrible thing.

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

I've always tried to figure out what people think of themselves and what they think they're projecting.

Amy Heckerling
Amy Heckerling

When I was 20, I had these furrowed lines between my brows because I was always angry. And I was 20. I don't think that was a mark of age; it was just my personality.