I've never lost a grown-up child, but I have known loss.

It's true, I've become one of those grumpy older women.

Acting attracts shy people and show-offs.

I have spent my whole life educating myself.

I am drawn to characters that go on journeys, characters that are real people, that have life.

I don't tell everyone my life history because if everyone knows your inside-leg measurement, how can you surprise them?

You need to keep on doing things you have never done before in your career. You have to have a go.

You don't go to a comedy and try to laugh. You laugh in spite of yourself. You don't just come on stage and cry. Something has pushed you to cry.

I've learnt to listen. I don't think I always did listen.

When you play someone who is an iconic figure you can't go into it lightly.

I've had very close relationships with some twentieth-century writers.

...writers are often the worst judges of what they have written.

How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

Mama, don't forget to put a little monument on my tomb when I'm dead.

I do have tatoos, and I do wear leather, but there are other sides of me, that my film express.

Humility doesn't mean hiding in the corner and pretending you are not strong. Humility means to be what you are.

Comprehensive, judicious, evenhanded, original. An Unfinished Life has the sober judgment and nuanced accuracy that make it ring true in all the controversial and tricky parts.

And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

The thing I would like to do most is to find somehow to bring peace to the world. It has eluded me.

No time limit in Iraq; stay until we achieve stability.

Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening.