I had never even thought I'd be an actress - I was supposed to be a lawyer. But the motivation is the same: when you act, you defend a role; you have to be convincing. It's the same career.

To what purpose is it to be artificially happy on the surface?

Knowing what I know of love, I hang back because I don't like to lie to myself.

I had never even thought I'd be an actress - I was supposed to be a lawyer. But the motivation is the same: when you act, you defend a role; you have to be convincing. It's the same career.

On the surface I look fragile and insecure; you have to know me very well.

Body language is essential for an actress, even if you don't use your body in an athletic way. Just to be free, to use it like your voice. A body can be small and have incredible violence. A body talks.

Actors should be timeless and impersonal.

It's terrifying, that unconditional love you have for a child. I still wonder if she really came from me, from my womb. It's a miracle. I don't understand it. I live it very intensely.

I try to live the moment and not obey laws, rules, conventions, or norms; to react to a sensation, a feeling, or an emotion. You can't program emotion.

I adore people who ask questions and who cause others to share in their search.

You have to get it in your brain that you don't belong to yourself as an actor, but that you belong to the director who creates the character.

Body language is essential for an actress even if you dont use your body in an athletic way. Just to be free to use it like your voice. A body can be small and have incredible violence. A body talks.

By Rice's own standards, the war was well underway by the time he took office. He was a war president the moment he took the oath. But did he act like one?

Under current law volunteers who are not working with an official nonprofit organization are not covered by the Volunteer Protection Act. Therefore, there are absolutely no legal protections for the average American who wishes to volunteer.

Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.

I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.

I knew I wanted to act, and I was really driven, so I kept going for it. We moved to L.A. full-time when I was 8 or 9.

Maybe I can't act, but I know the gimmicks. I studied acting all my life and know what's good for me.

I've done a lot of acting. I'm not saying I'm the greatest, but I'd love to act, I'd love to sing.

P.C. is just too Big Brother - telling me how I should act and feel.

Act well your part, there all the honour lies.

I'm a 7 o'clock act. My people want to go to a show, a dinner and then go home and go to bed.

For me, romance isn't an over-the-top act. It's someone offering to help and to support me. Or if that person thinks I'm making the wrong decision, he'll tell me. I want him to be honest, because being that honest takes a lot of guts.

I want more children but for the next three years I want to act.

I have to say that it's very few countries that are willing to look back at its past and apologize for its act, or make amends for its act, as the United States had one.

I think unleashing 3,000 smart bombs against the city of Baghdad in the first several days of the war... to me, if those were unleashed against the San Francisco Bay Area, I would call that an act of extreme terrorism.

I cannot sing, dance or act; what else would I be but a talk show host.

My kids act all the time and it's exactly what I used to do.

After the magical act accomplished by Joyce with Ulysses, perhaps we are getting away from it.

Presidents quickly realize that while a single act might destroy the world they live in, no one single decision can make life suddenly better or can turn history around for the good.

A marriage is no amusement but a solemn act, and generally a sad one.

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

I went to my last three years of high school in New Jersey. I just wanted to act, you know?

Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit.

You always do what you want to do. This is true with every act. You may say that you had to do something, or that you were forced to, but actually, whatever you do, you do by choice. Only you have the power to choose for yourself.

Soap opera wouldn't be my first choice, but at this point in my life, I would consider a soap. It would allow me to act and still do other things with my life.

Theatre director: a person engaged by the management to conceal the fact that the players cannot act.

Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic.

You have people who can't act and they get all these parts. Paris Hilton falls into her own category. She's made a career out of it.

I really started trying to get my act together in August of 2002.

I cannot consistently, with self respect, do other than I have, namely, to deliberately violate an act which seems to me to be a denial of everything which ideally and in practice I hold sacred.

In the last four years under the Patriot Act, we have seen a great increase in the ability of law enforcement officials to investigate and track terrorists.

An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world. No act is so private it does not seek applause.

Maybe it's because I'm getting older, I'm finding enjoyment in things that stop time. Just the simple act of tasting a glass of wine is its own event. You're not downing a glass of wine in the midst of doing something else.

My legislation, the Simple Savings Tax Relief Act of 2005, simply eliminates the taxation of interest earned in savings accounts, such as passbook savings accounts or bank certificates of deposit.

We have seen that, in another unfunded mandate, the so-called No Child Left Behind Act, which created tougher standards, and we all support that, but Congress did not provide the money to attract and hire the best teachers.

There are roles I want that my agency might not want me to do because of the subject matter or whatever. Or there are roles that people won't bring to me because they don't think I'll do it. And that is a big strain because an actor wants to act.

I want to act because I don't know how to do anything else.

We believe, in fact, that the one act of respect has little force unless matched by the other - in balance with it... The acting out of that dual respect I would name as precisely the source of our power.