It's hard for actors to have to deal with the fact that they pour so much into their character, but the audience might have a negative assessment of them.

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.

Growing up loving the Bible made me apt to love other books. I don't love them in the same way I love the Bible, but a lesser love came easily. The splendor of sunlight does not take away

It's a beautiful thing, diving into the cool crisp water and then just sort of being able to pull your body through the water and the water opening up for you.

If everyone were a good person, it'd obviously be a better world.

A grandchild is a miracle, but a renewed relationship with your own children is even a greater one.

I'm always looking for ways that I can work from home with my home studio and stay busy. This is a great way to do it. Having a home studio has made projects like this a lot easier.

The death rate among Marines in Iraq has been more than double that of the other services.

They had...finished their lives before their death - which is not always the end of life and often comes long before the end.

[Margot Hentoff] was an editor there for a time as well as a writer.

It sounds old-fashioned to say, but we have some kind of purpose for being here, not poets or writers, but all of us humans.

It was not in me It came and went I wanted to hold it It was held by wine (I no longer know what it was)