I find myself gravitating towards drama. It interests me. In the books I read, the paintings I like, it's always the darker stuff.

We're so afraid of death in our culture, but I think if we understand it better, then we'll appreciate the life we have more.

Pain is such an important thing in life. I think that as an artist you have to experience suffering.

Mum put me in drama classes when I was about 14. I'd been going on about it for some time, so maybe it was a way to shut me up.

It's always nerve-racking to take off your clothes on film. But doing it with a woman felt safer than with a man. You know you can say, 'Don't grab me there: That's where my cellulite is'!

I find myself gravitating towards drama. It interests me. In the books I read, the paintings I like, it's always the darker stuff.

I'm not this dark, twisted person. Yes, I have my demons and this is my way of exorcising them. It gets them out - and better out than in.

The biggest place I look for validation is from my mother. That's the little girl in me that will never grow up.

I'm a tomboy now. I always wanted to fit in with my brother's group, so I climbed trees and played with lead soldiers. But I'm a woman's woman. I never understood women who don't have woman friends.

Oh, I'm definitely a wild child.

I had gotten to a place where I truly believed everything I was called: 'not sexy,' 'not funny,' 'too intense,' desperate.' All those labels they gave me, I took them because there wasn't a trace of my true self left.

There's a set of rules out there somewhere that says it all ends by 40. I hope to be able to defy that because I truly love my work.

It was total naivety that got me to Hollywood. I thought it was going to happen straight away. I told myself 'give it 5 years, there's no way I'll be here after that if it doesn't happen'. Cut to ten years later!

I always love being in the company of women. It's all about good conversation and great wine.

There's a lot of skeletons in my closet, but I know what they're wearing. I'm not gonna act all ashamed of it.

There was a time I was very much blaming the way I felt on L.A, that it was a vacuum of creativity, of humor or anything organic, and I was really angry at the place. But then today I feel completely different - I love L.A.!

If I have to produce movies, direct movies, whatever to change the way Hollywood treats older women, I'll do it. If I have to bend the rules, I will. If I have to break them, I will.

Whatever is said about roles drying up, I intend to keep working. Certainly now the roles couldn't be more interesting - playing mothers, divorcees. I think it's going to be exciting to play a mother of teenagers. The longer your life, the deeper it gets.

That's one of the lucky things about getting the success later on. I know how I want to dress, I know what kind of house I want to live in, I just know more about myself, and that's true about the roles I want to play and what parts of myself I want to express. You're just more in touch with yourself.

You won't find me in a romantic comedy. Those movies don't speak to me. People don't come to talk to me about those scripts, because they probably think I'm this dark, twisted, miserable person.

You have to make peace with yourself. The key is to find the harmony in what you have.

When I had dark hair I definitely felt that I was more anonymous.

On set is where I feel comfortable. The red carpet stuff, talking about the film, explaining your own life, it doesn't come naturally. It's all necessary stuff I suppose but it's not my strength.

As much as my kids keep me young, they also have the reverse effect when I don't have the energy.

I know it's silly, but I still think I'm 28.

I'm not sure why I still think of myself as 28 - maybe that's the point where you start growing up, and then you just feel the same for evermore.

When I was about 14, my family emigrated from England to Australia, and we decided to stop in Bali on the way through.

There were a lot of adventure books for boys, historical novels by Kenneth Roberts, and whatever mystery novels the alarmed librarian imagined might not corrupt an eager but innocent youth.

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.

It is the interest one takes in books that makes a library. And if a library have interest it is; if not, it isn't.

I enjoy about 1 out of 100 movies, it's about the same proportion to books published that I care to read.

I was drawn to boxing because I got beat up as a kid. I was the kid with the piano books in a New York neighbourhood.

It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.

The proper study of mankind is books.

I have written about 10 books, all just practical encouragement for moms.

Whites were the winners, blacks were the losers, we wrote the history books, and they didn't feature.

Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable.

You could say, in a vulgar Freudian way, that I am the unhappy child who escapes into books. Even as a child, I was most happy being alone. This has not changed.

Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist.

As I have studied the Bible and the Book of Mormon, I have come to know through the power of the Spirit of God, that these books contain the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

There are some friends you don't meet for twenty years and when you meet them again it's as if no twenty years has happened - you're lucky when that happens. I feel the same about books.

Then I found books that were written much later, as late as 15 years ago. It was very superficial material, but enough to tell me that the genesis of this story was worth exploring.

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them.

Well, it was actually - I brought the idea of doing a documentary to HBO back in 2000, when there were some press reports sort of were bandied about that there were going to TV movies based on some of the books that were out.

In my subconscious, my books were part of a single emotional journey.

I get letters from readers who say that they have always hated reading, but somebody suggested one of my books, they actually finished the book and enjoyed it, and they're going on to read another book. I'm thrilled that they have figured out that reading is fun.

I never buy magazines, I never even buy books.

Books are funny little portable pieces of thought.

Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.