It took Sydney Pollack a long time to get me to do Tootsie. I asked myself if I wanted to play some frothy, ditzy character after I had just done Frances. Obviously, I'm thrilled that I did.

I never felt like I belonged in Minnesota when I was growing up there. That's why I was out the door as soon as I turned 18.

The natural state of motherhood is unselfishness. When you become a mother, you are no longer the center of your own universe. You relinquish that position to your children.

When you learn not to want things so badly, life comes to you.

I regret those times when I've chosen the dark side. I've wasted enough time not being happy.

Moments of pure happiness...come upon you unexpectedly. Don't be too preoccupied to experience them.

Everything is transient. Everything is constantly changing. The only thing we have is now.

One of the things I love about acting is that it reveals a certain something about yourself, but it doesn't reveal your own personal story.

Don't be absent from your own life.

I've never been a sunny personality. I've never been outgoing. I'm a solitary person.

Acceptance and tolerance and forgiveness, those are life-altering lessons.

A good entrepreneur is a good teacher.

The commencement of true happiness is the realization that your happiness begins with you.

I am not what I think I am, and I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am.

In Maine we have a saying that there's no point in speaking unless you can improve on silence.

Beware of those who would pit the dead prophets against the living prophets, for the living prophets always take precedence.

I am glad to think I am not bound to make the world go right, but only to discover and to do, with cheerful heart, the work that God appoints.

I can't pass up a blank book when I see it in a bookstore. And I write a sentence in it, and then I put it away.

And I think that's why I was going to be a musician. I was very rebellious. And I didn't want to be an actor. My father used to say to me you should be an actor if you want to be in the arts.

Power makes you a monarch, and all the fancy robes in the world won't do the job without it.

I don't hear record companies coming up with any good ideas or suggestions. Historically, if it ain't their idea, it ain't no good, so you got that to contend with.