[Working with Meryl Streep] I just felt like I was shaving years off my discovery as an actress to realize, "Okay, that's what this feels like."

You cannot live your life to please others. The choice must be yours.

Whatever you are made of, be the best of that.

A man told me that for a woman, I was very opinionated. I said, 'for a man you're kind of ignorant'.

I have no aspirations of world domination through the pop charts. None at all.

I believe I've always been a big believer in equality. No one has ever been able to tell me I couldn't do something because I was a girl.

I think that people had this idea that I sat at home and sucked on lollipops and ate cotton candy while I watched cartoons - wearing a tiara.

Oftentimes, what you wind up learning is very different than what you expect.

But you have to remember in life that there's a positive to every negative and a negative to every positive.

Your face needs to have character if you're an actor - otherwise you're just a face.

I've always believed in people's capacity for goodness. I still believe that people are good. What I'm not so trusting about anymore is their relationship to their own goodness.

It is necessary to grow up in maturity, firmness and courage in order to reach the goal

Always keep your smile. That's how I explain my long life.

...what she had been waiting to see on someone else's face was not empathy but the companionship of unmitigated suffering...

My mom would have killed me before, but I'm an adult woman now, and I'm ready to show the world that you can have it all at 40 - be fabulous, 40, and pose for Playboy.

I don't feel I insult people. I try and get to the facts and I don't feel I insult people.

If it's just a symbol, then to hell with it !

We get our morals from books. I didn't get mine from books, but I know that morals do come from books- theoretically at least.

Nature was taking back what had once been hers.

Bards were terrible at keeping secrets. They insisted on putting them to music.

You can talk good ideas out of existence.