Callie Khouri Quotes

The world will provide you with every imaginable obstacle, but the one most difficult to overcome will be the lack of faith in yourself. Leave it to others to have doubts about you.

Women who just don't like each other because the other one is a woman and "women don't like each other" myth - that's not interesting to me at all. How do you compete in the market place, how you stay relevant after many years of being in the public eye - all of that. To me, that's interesting and that's real.

One of the magical things about Nashville is just how many incredibly talented people are here and the way they support each other.

I don't think any studio - it was a long shot at the time - but I don't think any studio in a million years would make 'Thelma and Louise' right now. But there's so many other kinds of movies they won't make right now.

With female-oriented movies, unless it's something like 'Bridesmaids' or a romantic comedy, you've got to really worry about your opening weekend. And I'm always telling stories about women, not younger women, and it's just a much tougher audience to get to the movie theater.

I want to make something that's respectful and respected. And I think you can make something for women that is respected on television.

Nashville is the place where I first realized how impossible it is to look at someone and know what is inside them, what special something they possess.

Don't let your failures define you.
Let them refine you.

Kelly Clarkson is the most adorable person on the planet. She is just so nice.

Well, we're not in the middle of nowhere, but we can see it from here.

I don't know anyone male or female who can quote-unquote have it all. It's a made-up idea. Men don't have it all. They may have it better because they get paid more for the same work, but they don't have it all.

One of the reasons I wanted to do a show about Nashville in Nashville was because when I lived here, the hardest thing to go out and hear was country music. Country was taking place inside the studio and it was an export.

You're allowed to make things for women on television, and there's not like ... you don't have to go through the humiliation of having made something directed at women. There it's just accepted, whereas if it's a feature, it's like 'So, talk to me about chick flicks.' It's like ... I don't think you want to hear my opinion about this.

Always, in all circumstances, wear comfortable shoes. You never know when you may have to run for your life.

I'm not musical myself.

Chick flick is not a term used to praise a movie. Nobody says 'it's a great chick flick.' It's a way of being derisive. I'm not clear why it's ok to do it.

If the same energy went into marketing movies to women as they do on the other demographics we might see more of a spike.

I remember when I used to have actual time to write and now you don't have time and you just do it. I think it explains a lot about television.

There are so many screenwriters with incredible stories to tell, so I hope there will be some kind of shift in the business where very few types of movies are now made by the studios. There needs to be different budgets for different audiences; not everything having to be a huge opening weekend.

You can't do a movie without villains. You have to have something for the heroines or anti-heroines to be up against, and I wasn't going to contrive some monstrous female, but even if this were the most men-bashing movie ever made-let all us women get guns and kill men-it wouldn't even begin to make up for the 99% of all movies where the women are there to be caricatured as bimbos or to be skinned and decapitated. If men feel uncomfortable in the audience it is because they are identifying with the wrong character.

'Gravity' is a great example of a movie that we hope they're going to do more of. It's really entertaining, with a female star. It's not the kind of film you typically see, and gives me hope.

I call myself a feminist, not a feminist filmmaker. If somebody asked me if I had a feminist sensibility it would be pretty hard to deny, but is it the theme of my work? Not necessarily. I'm interested in a lot of things.

People always ask me about 'Girls' with this kind of hesitation. What do I think of it? I love it. It's awesome. I get a lot of Where do you come down on this? I come down on the side of 'Yay, Lena Dunham. Congratulations. I'm jealous.' She's doing something so fantastic. Maybe it's not for everybody, but it certainly is for me.

Every so often when I'm writing, a character might actually be a distinct person in my head - often not an actor or a face, literally a person who just seems to exist in my imagination. Then the challenge is finding somebody who is close enough to that to make me feel like I've ended up where I wanted to be.

When people know I wrote 'Thelma and Louise,' they don't want to mess with me.

Political stories in general are tough. They just don't appeal to as wide an audience.

I didn't think of 'Thelma and Louise' as a feminist movie.

I'm almost numb to misogyny at this point. It's just everywhere.

I tried to get a baseball movie made a couple of years ago and I don't think it didn't happen because I was a woman, but because sports movie don't sell internationally.

Movie studios are owned by giant corporations. They care about money; they don't care about movies.

What I'm not about is exploiting women.

When I lived in Nashville, Tanya Tucker and people like that were coming up, and I'm sure that Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette were going, 'What's that noise? That's not country.' It's always been this battle where whoever comes up behind the reigning stars isn't country enough. There really is a lot more crossover now.

I like writing flawed women, and being one, it's something I feel I can write with some veracity and authority.

I don't see the country audience looking forward to an out male singer. There are rumors about people but no one ever confirms because there is a tremendous amount of money at stake.

Whenever I've seen shows or films set here, they just don't feel like the real Nashville to me.

We get the best people we can get and it turns out a lot of them are women. I've said this before If you hire people solely on their merit you wind up hiring a lot of women. I wonder how many other shows even come close to our numbers.