It's funny, though, because when I first started going to races after we met, I was extremely nervous. It's like being backstage and hoping you don't trip over something or break an amp or accidentally speak into a live microphone, so I was really hesitant.

I was always told I was special. And I was also assured that I had a gift and a purpose.

No, I don't tolerate pressure from anyone about anything.

Well, the fact is that one imagination is critically important, and if you have had your imagination stimulated by what is basically a variety of subjects, you are much more amenable to accepting, to understanding and interacting with the realities of the world.

People say that to me and I think what unites all my characters is that they are hurt; it's most accurate to say I play characters that are hurt but are responding to their environment.

More often than what you're suggesting, I find people are surprised that I have an urban side to me.

And it blew my mind when I started to get wind of the fact that they actually liked me being around. That was humbling, because Kentucky basketball is a big deal, and I am not the biggest fan - I am just the most notorious one.

I've always been crazy for the American songbook.

I've been devoted to Alison Krauss for many, many years.

I can't think of anything I want and need that I don't already have but at the same time, I'm not sated.

It's funny, though, because when I first started going to races after we met, I was extremely nervous. It's like being backstage and hoping you don't trip over something or break an amp or accidentally speak into a live microphone, so I was really hesitant.

I have a lot of variety within me, and the dream role, I think, is actually a compilation of parts that express different aspects of my persona and personal interests.

Everything I've done has been personally fun, important, and meaningful to me.

I think that being perceptive and having interests is nothing but an asset.

I have a responsibility to nurture and shepherd my talent and when I'm living the parts of my life not related to that I feel I have the right to be left alone.

When I accept a role, I feel that as an artist I have to submit completely to the tutelage of my director. And while I expect to be heard and encouraged and honored, at the end of the day, man, it's the way the director wants it.

Both my husband and I give a lot of ourselves in what we do because that is our public lives; but in my private life, I have an intrinsic right to be left alone.

You don't stay married for 35 years by accident. I think that that's willful and intentional and something that both people really want.

Some Kentucky fans are a little more subdued.

It's up to us to take pop culture back and to express quality and dignity for both boys and girls.

And of course there's so much music in and around our family. I had a piano during Christmas because it's obviously useful through the season. There are so many people, songwriters, who are around.

Regardless, we are a two career household, and it's Dario's season, and I'm really excited about going racing.

I think that, as with marriage, you just know when it's time to have kids.

Yeah, I've had the privilege to know a lot of really talented people.

I think that we give the impression, to carry on your metaphor, that we go a little faster than we actually do. I'm fairly lazy so I'm always interested in slowing down.

I get lonely when I'm a Playstation widow.

A lot of people over the years have been doing yoga and I think even more these days are expressing an interest in it. So there are a lot of manifestations of spirituality here in town.

Ruby in Paradise and the intensity and quality that I was able to experience on Smoke were equally as important to me as working on this movie every day for three-and-a-half months.

When I was working on Eye of the Beholder, I played a character who is so aloof that my whole lifestyle became very aloof. If someone knocked on my door, there was a part of me that went into a rage, because I wanted to be isolated and alone.

Abstinence, being faithful and correct and consistent condom use are the only ways to successfully reach everyone when discussing HIV prevention. I believe that the abstinence message alone does not solve the AIDS epidemic.

I did a lot of hiking and I loved it.

I think it's easy for me to connect to some people, and I don't know if that's the same thing as falling in love whereas before, I might have said it was.

Getting married is an incredible act of hopefulness.

Tough girls come from New York. Sweet girls, they're from Georgia. But us Kentucky girls, we have fire and ice in our blood. We can ride horses, be a debutante, throw left hooks, and drink with the boys, all the while making sweet tea, darlin'. And if we have an opinion, you know you're gonna hear it.

I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.

What I try to do for my readers is to pass on some of the things that I found out about being thirteen after doing it for forty years.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

Young people discovering their sexuality must know they walk with a strong tradition and that they are not alone. They have a right to information without being pressured.

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, three hours in a seasick steamer, and after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak three times, and then I'll be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

I don't like being recognised, I have no interest in being famous at all, I just do what I do. If I could be like Captain Kirk and beam myself up and then beam myself down, I would!

I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say.

Being a musician is what I do, but it's not what I am.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

We've had it very clear to the Bosnians that our obligation to equip and train their forces is completely conditional on the foreign forces being gone.

My parents were amazing people who had no business being together - and they knew it.