I am a light person. I think of myself with a shield, a protective shield around me. And I think of bad things bouncing off it. Boom, boom, boom, ba-boom, ba- boom!

What I am is how I came out. No one's perfect and you just have to accept your flaws and learn to love yourself.

It makes my skin crawl to think about the violent ways snakes, lizards, alligators and other exotic creatures are raised and killed for boots, bags and belts.

I have the thickest skin of anyone you'll ever meet. No one can say anything about me I haven't heard a million times before.

I do sometimes worry about getting older and the fact that I am not going to be a model for ever...[But] The fact that Helen Mirren can look so great in swimwear is an amazing boost for all women.

I'm into wellbeing, not because of social pressures to look a certain way, but because I'm interested in living a long, full and healthy life.

I've always paid my own way, I've never lived off anyone.

I've loved acting and dancing since I was a kid. Before anyone thought I was pretty or before I had a voluptuous figure, that was what I was going to do.

I regard myself as an actress but, obviously, not in the Dame Judi Dench league. That isn't a problem because I don't think we are ever likely to be up for the same part!

I don't want to make the same mistakes of being swept along with things, taking on jobs that I'm not passionate about, that I don't really believe in but that everyone says I should do.

My mum was never strict. I was allowed to go out to clubs underage, watch TV, listen to whatever music I wanted to, and that made me not rebel. I have never touched a drug in my life.

Nations rise and fall, flourish and decay, by what they believe in and by what their culture stands for.

The experience taught him [Salvador Allende] too late that a system cannot be changed from the government but from the power.

For women's tears are but the sweat of eyes.

Despite my excellent mood, I don't have any sympathy for Romney. If he'd been a good candidate he wouldn't have had a different campaign for every month on the calendar.

Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.

I don't want to do anything over again, ever again. I want only to do what I haven't done. There's no "again." There's only the future. I hate the past - especially my own past.

The level of discourse in this country is falling to a depth that cannot be sustained.

If you're always battling against getting older, you're always going to be unhappy, because it's going to happen anyhow.

When I used to write songs, especially on my own, it was just me and a guitar.

The sociability of artists is a paradoxical and precarious thing, and ceases the instant they begin their actual artistic work.