I like to take up something that is challenging. I like to stretch myself.

I wanted to be an actress. In college I was a serious feminist and very political. I was determined to get one thing out of my career and that was respect. I didn't want money. I didn't care about fame.

I like to take up something that is challenging. I like to stretch myself.

A friend of mine described it this way: When they were born it was like a meteor landed in our house and blew everything apart. We had to just put all the pieces back.

When I'm not working, my time is really about my children.

And that's why I chose on purpose not to have a death scene. We've seen them in a million movies and it's too much like cranking the tears out. I didn't want that scene.

When I was first starting out, if you were acting on television, it was a real stigma.

I think all industries are sexist in nature and I don't think the film industry is any different.

I am an actress and acting is my passion... period!

Competition is very good... as long as its healthy. It's what makes one strive to be better.

Theatre is more exciting in the sense that you can actually see the audience in the eye. You know there are no takes and retakes. You have one chance to do your job... and you better do it well!

The crossover wasn't happening. TV actors were TV actors, and film and stage actors were a whole different thing. And now there's just a lot of crossover.

My heart's in really great shape thanks to spinning classes.

Sure I faced the troubles and challenges that most actors and actresses face until they get noticed, but I was always confident of myself and my capabilities.

Television really does offer still great parts for women, cable in particular.

After doing so many different roles, if you don't stretch yourself, there's no excitement left.

I loved the stage and then grew to love the camera.

I was a fighter and very determined. There was no way I was going to back out without winning.

I demanded two weeks of rehearsal because to me as an actor, that's the most important time.

It was not really a career choice that I had to make. It was something I knew right from the beginning. I had to be an actress... period.

I most often land up taking up the roles that I most detest.

I don't want to fight aging; I want to take good care of myself, but plastic surgery and all that? I'm not interested.

Its only when you are a great actor and are recognised for your good work that you become famous. Unless you are in the news for the wrong reasons!

I would take up any small job on the sets, just so that I could hang around with the hope of getting noticed.

I'm more proud of quitting smoking than of anything else I've done in my life, including winning an Oscar.

After doing so many different roles if you dont stretch yourself theres no excitement left.

Aside from my modelling, by the early Nineties I was also starting to work as a photographer, which I loved.

I tried to take heavy metal... and balled it up and chopped it in half and really tried to create a new form of energy. I really tried to re-shape extreme music as I see it through my eyes.

There's Catholic guilt about things, then there's the guilt of being the youngest of 10, so when nice things happen to you, you're not really allowed to enjoy them.

If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.

You balance the budget by restraining the growth of government and encouraging the growth of the private sector.

You know that a lot of people go to emergency rooms when they don't really need to.

It's a piece of property that, if you're going to have a development out here, you need to have a golf course because you need to take care of the effluent water being created by the development.

I was never a glamour puss whose career was really based on a look or an attitude. I've been basically playing the same parts I am at 55 that I was at 35. I get cast as strong women, and that can be a mother or a judge or anything.

My favorite fruit is grapes. Because with grapes, you always get another chance. 'Cause, you know, if you have a crappy apple or a peach, you're stuck with that crappy piece of fruit. But if you have a crappy grape, no problem - just move on to the next. 'Grapes: The Fruit of Hope.'

In the first half of the 20th century, fashion was simply not a very English thing to do.

I used to be really fat, but now I'm not. I used to have hair, but now I don't. I used to be able to see without corrective lenses, but now I can't. One of these this is exacerbated by the fact that I'm an editor. One of these things is true despite the fact that I'm an editor. One of them has nothing to do with me being an editor.

I'm not religious in any formal sense, not in any God sense.

Too many children are being parked in substandard day care with workers who make little more than a parking attendant.

It's easier to play quirky characters and hide behind wardrobe and make-up, especially.

General principles should not be based on exceptional cases.

Scientific truth will out, you can't hide the sun under a stone

Personally, I don't choose any particular religion or symbol or group of words or teachings to define me. That's between me and the most high. You know, my higher self. The Creator.

As a beat reporter covering the CIA and intelligence world after the terrorist attacks of 2001, I could sense that many things I couldn't see or understand were changing, expanding, getting so big they were difficult to manage.

Don't fight with the pillow, but lay down your head and kick every worriment out of the bed.

Millions of Americans are either underemployed or unemployed.

I had thought about landing in the Kremlin, but there wasn't enough space.

I was always an avid reader of books. My vocabulary, my English are all thanks to that reading habit. Reading keeps me grounded. I came from a very middle class family - poor, in fact.

But once you've made a song and you put it out there, you don't own it anymore. The public own it. It's their song. It might be their song that they wake up to, or their song they have a shower to, or their song that they drive home to or their song they cry to, scream to, have babies to, have weddings to - like, it isn't your song anymore.