I have always had a lot more trouble with my truths than with my deceits

I loved playing the part of the feisty Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker

Alcohol is a very patient drug. It will wait for the alcoholic to pick it up one more time.

At awards time, The Exorcist was nominated in 11 categories, everybody but the janitor was up for an Oscar. There was no category for what I did.

My only true harmony lies deep within my soul, wherever that is. I know that somehow I am in tune with the universe.

I believe in joy, but I believe in the flip-side, agony.

I can choose to accelerate my disease to an alcoholic death or incurable insanity, or I can choose to live within my thoroughly human condition.

One of the cruelest judgments sustained against me is that I have spoken out as a recovered alcoholic to stimulate my acting career.

Aside from my son, no person has ever shown for me the gentle concern I knew from Governor Adlai Stevenson.

I have reached a state in life where I can buy a whole house full of chairs and can bump into them until they are black and blue

I'd never been in play long enough for the flowers to die in the dressing room

Making suffering loom larger, by globalizing it, may spur people to feel they ought to "care" more.

Just because she has high standards, doesn't mean she’s high maintenance. Don’t confuse the two.

It never ceases to amaze me that in times of amazing human suffering somebody says something that can be so utterly stupid.

I think with acting, since I became an actor... I, as a person, have become more confident and I have really come out of my shell somewhat... and back to myself, you know.

God gave me the talent and I endeavor to give it back to Him with each new idea.

If England had scored in the first half, I think the young legs would have found younger hearts inside them

Never take no for an answer. It took me 20 years between the time I wrote my first screenplay and the time I actually got money to direct a movie.

My bulimia was my addiction. Hurting myself was my addiction... The music is what saved me. That's the only thing I can trust.

Any writer who could handle all these different voices would deserve high praise, but to do so without any sense of jarring or incoherence is an extraordinary accomplishment.

I belong nowhere and to no one.