Writing allows for fictitious voices - the voices of persons unlike myself - that might otherwise be muted.

Memory blurs, that's the point. If memory didn't blur you wouldn't have the fool's courage to do things again, again, again, that tear you apart.

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.

I never change, I simply become more myself.

How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.

Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality.

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.

Night comes to the desert all at once, as if someone turned off the light.

Keep a light, hopeful heart. But ­expect the worst.

See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be

Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!

Be pretty if you can be witty if you must be agreeable if it kills you.

If you're going to act and do this for a living, you want to play something that the audience didn't expect.

May you always be courageous, stand upright and be strong, may you stay forever young.

Other people have noticed more of an evolution than I have and so I'll try to tell you where I'm coming from and also relate it to what I think other people perceive.

There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction.

For "The Intervention" I came up with a back-story and Clea [Duvall] was like, "No." And I was like, "I don't care."

I'd rather be number one on the worst-dressed list than number two on the best.

I've never felt fallow in the sense that there's been no work.

There is no more sovereign eloquence than the truth in indignation.