The biggest research of all when I do a character is self-examination. You look at yourself and you ask, 'How am I similar to this person and how am I different?'

I have tender, romantic associations with upstate New York.

Music is what our feelings sound like.

There are women who make things better, there are women who change things, there are women who make things happen, who make a difference. I want to be one of those women.

In the quiet moments, the discoveries are made.

Your soul either feels lifted by something that you read, or it feels squashed by it.

No role is more challenging, rewarding and inspiring than my real-life role as a mom and a wife.

There's no wrong way to experience a film.

Am I ambitious? I used to be afraid of that word but now I think ambition is a good thing.

I think I always try to be accommodating and open and available and proving for my director. I love to give as many takes as they want. I love to give them as many choices as they want.

Doubt is the middle position between knowledge and ignorance. It encompasses cynicism but also genuine questioning.

For the commission to do a great building, I would have sold my soul like Faust. Now I had found my Mephistopheles. He seemed no less engaging than Goethe's.

He tries to find the exit from himself but there is no door.

He scowled at Jason. "And please, I don't like being touched. Don't ever grab me again.

To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of man.

The Olympic Spirit is neither the property of one race nor of one age.

All the learnin' my father paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.

We're not keen on the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader. But the reader's own life "outside" the story changes the story.

I write in English first, and then I translate to Spanish. I've always felt more comfortable with the English side of things first.

Madame Bovary and a flying carpet, they are both untrue in the same way. Somebody made them up.

The Mobile Web Initiative is important - information must be made seamlessly available on any device.