A biography for Amy Heckerlinghasn’t been written yet.
“I'd rather see what young people are going through than see things explode.”
“I went to art and design high school with a lot of people taking fashion. They would get up in the morning, and what they put on meant a lot to them.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Hollywood is the dream factory, and no one dreams about older women.”
“I was in a special class, where you skip a grade - you go from seventh to ninth. But I got kicked out. You had to maintain an 85 average, and I didn't. I was too focused on trying to be popular.”
“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.”
“It definitely sharpened my interest in language, the way people used language, slang words, speech patterns. There's a big advantage to being the outsider.”
“I like being able to tape things and then having them home waiting for you, but just dealing with the Time Warner Cable people will drive you insane.”
“I wasted most of my 20s being so frustrated I forgot to have fun. I was so concentrated on one thing - 'Must make movie.'”
“There's something you do when you're completely confident that just can't be replicated when you know you're doing something wrong.”
“I just wanted to do something about the teenage experience; it's such a wonderful and horrible time of life.”
“I spent my entire youth in front of a TV watching old movies, and as soon as I was able to get a subway pass, when I was 14, I joined the Museum of Modern Art and was there all weekend watching old movies.”
“When you have somebody writing or acting for you, you have to be free to have them hate you so you can get your ideas across without worrying.”
“Blood probably tastes like salty water, right?”
“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.”
“Everything you try to do in life, of any value, people are going to be saying, 'No, no, no.' You have to have the ability to not see that or hear that.”
“For my money, the movies of the '70s were just amazing.”
“In junior high, I really wanted to be popular. Suddenly there were parties with boys, and I wanted to be part of that. There was a group of girls, and I wanted to be friends with them.”
“Bitterness is so ugly. I don't want to go there.”