[on the ending of "Thelma & Louise"] It always struck me as preposterous that people saw it as a suicide. I don't even think of them as dead. I just wasn't in any way prepared for people to say, 'God, they killed themselves? What kind of message is that?' I want to say, 'It's the message you came up with, not me.' To me, the ending was symbolic, not literal. I mean, come on, read a book. We did everything possible to make sure you didn't see a literal death. That you didn't see the car land, you didn't see a big puff of smoke come up out of the canyon. You were left with the image of them flying. They flew away, out of this world and into the mass unconscious. Women who are completely free from all the shackles that restrain them have no place in this world. The world is not big enough to support them. They will be brought down if they stay here. They weren't going to be brought down. So let them go. I loved that ending and I loved the imagery. After all they went through I didn't want anybody to be able to touch them. Show less «

[responding to being called a 'toxic feminist' for writing "Thelma & Louise"] Kiss my ass, kiss my ass. I was raised in this society. Let them get their deal worked out about the way women are treated in films before they start hassling me about the way men are treated. There's a whole genre of films known as 'exploitation' based on the degradation of women and as a whole bunch of redneck critics extolling its virtues, and until there's a subgenre of women doing the same thing to men in numbers too numerous to court, as is the case with exploitation film, then just shut the fuck up. Show less «

[1992: Accepting her Oscar for Best Original Screenplay] "Well, for everybody that wanted to see a happy ending for Thelma & Louise (1991), to me, this is it." Show less «