Successful model? That's a myth. The year I modeled was the most painful year of my life. Editors would always talk to you in the third person as though you were merely a piece of merchandise.

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.

Popular versus literary—a false divide?

Ah! That glance of yours did some magic on me, you were not aware of. For once I died and was reborn.

Just the knowledge that a good book is waiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.

I vowed to never use my American accent, and I didn't. Even going to get the paper in the morning to buying milk down at the shop, getting a cab, wherever.

It's my first sort of commercial attempt, but it made sense for me because I'm not that kind of guy and I'm not going to continue to do that kind of movie.

And what makes the whites who have these middle-class values have those values? Where did they get it? They didn't have these same values four hundred years, five hundred years ago.

Few of us stand prosperity; another man's I mean.

Vanity, in a fairy tale, will make you evil. Vanity in the real world will drive you nuts. Vanity makes you say things like “I deserved a better life than this.

I think you should live your moral values, but the last thing, the very last thing, the government should do is have laws that would punish women who make reproductive choices.

I didn't read The Haunting of Hill House until sometime early in the 1990's.