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.

Performing was how I was able to release this pain I had.

As attractive as it is, the idea that nature can exist beyond our dangerous 'instinct for happiness' is never the whole story.

I'm not trying to keep up or adapt. I'm allowing myself to grow, evolve and create new music.

The cross is the surest truest and deepest window on the very heart and character of the living and loving God.

I was what? - twelve years old - and I was thrown in the cells with these people, so I learned fast.

I'm just myself, so I don't know that I think of myself as a nerd icon.

This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.

Fame is not a natural condition for human beings.

I need to show the world that my final goal is to perform huge concerts like Madonna.

Where there is no fruit there may be no root.

Through every rift of discovery some seeming anomaly drops out of the darkness, and falls, as a golden link into the great chain of order.

I definitely saw 'The Kill,' when I started it, as an entertainment.

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

I'm a Southerner - I never take satisfaction in touching a nerve. I guess if I'm forced to find a good side, I'm glad that people are talking about an issue that hasn't really been discussed all that much. I'm glad that people are talking about it from the black perspective and the white perspective.

Well, painting is the one thing I do, that is just me. It's me and easels, and the pencils. And as long as I don't drool too much over the canvas, the colors come out pretty good. And it's a chance to express all that I've got inside, that I sometimes keep hidden. And I think that's why I paint big broad, wide open landscapes.

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within.

Women standing up for each other is critically important.

After things started to happen here, my choice of material was extremely limited. It was a weird situation.

Working 24 hours a day isn't enough anymore. You have to be willing to sacrifice everything to be successful, including your personal life, your family life, maybe more. If people think it's any less, they're wrong, and they will fail.

Have you ever struggled to find work or love, only to find them after you have given up? This is the paradox of letting go. Let go, in order to achieve. Letting go is God's law.

School was hard for me. If there had been a school for the creative arts, I might have thrived, but... I needed that creative outlet so much. Also, I'm just bad with numbers.

I've been in the room or watched artists walk in who don't write, and you can't figure out what they really want.

My observation is that after one hundred and twenty years of modernisation since the opening of the country, present-day Japan is split between two opposite poles of ambiguity.