If I have to spend prolonged periods of time in a trailer, I go mad. Stuck in a metal box doing nothing, I lie there paralysed with boredom.

I can't spend the rest of my life being pretty in a bonnet.

My alter egos have changed a lot over the years. When I was a child, I was a black horse called Storm. Whinnying and jumping over bamboo poles in the garden took up pretty much my entire childhood.

Female ambition is such a complicated thing to play because it is an aggressive quality, and people respond very badly to women exhibiting any kind of aggression.

I can only do something that my sister or my daughter, if I have one, could watch and feel positive about.

I don't really want to do things that I feel like are going to send out a message that I don't really want to sign up for.

I realise there's an innate paradox in promoting oneself on the one hand and saying, 'Oh, I don't want to be famous,' on the other.

We live in a society where children are expected to become adults overnight.

Motherhood so often comes in conflict with women's capacity to express and live their own lives.

I have always been interested in gender politics, so I'm not that keen on doing things that don't represent a truth about women.

I just don't believe you're capable of being an actor unless you have a desire to experience your emotions in a public way.

The Word of God I think of as a straight edge, which shows up our own crookedness. We can't really tell how crooked our thinking is until we line it up with the straight edge of Scripture.

Sometimes it just feels really really wonderful to be alive.

The difference between an achiever and a loser is, An achiever never gives up, never settles and lastly never forgets.

Art always penetrates the particular fissures in one's psychic life.

The subject of heaven is much easier to accept than the subject of hell. And yet the Bible teaches both.

One will never find in the waterfall of sights anything else than the Illusion of Life, which falls in torrents on the granite rocks of the souls.

Ernie Hayes, Jimmy Lewis, and either Belton Evans or Khalil Mahdi on drums [were in Sweet Basil]. All those guys really took care of me.

I'm very focused when I'm making a movie, but I'm also a fantastic multitasker.

Directing is like guitar playing. That's a unique mind-set and talent, unto itself. I like the idea of putting everything together to make a great movie.

Auditioning is the most terrifying thing Ive ever done. There must have been four or five of them where I completely froze up and walked out of the room. My palms get sweaty just thinking about it.