I don't have high expectations anymore. Maybe they've just been beaten out of me.

I spent my whole life trying to play the games males play.

I may be the girl next door, but you wouldn't want to live next to me.

I understand now that the vulnerability I've always felt is the greatest strength a person can have. You can't experience life without feeling life. What I've learned is that being vulnerable to somebody you love is not a weakness, it's a strength.

After Leaving Las Vegas I did assume that things would get a lot easier than they've been. But it's just been a mirror of the way my career's been from the beginning, so for it to have changed would have been strange. My career has never been perfect.

I don't have high expectations anymore. Maybe they've just been beaten out of me.

After three major movies, I was like, 'Oh, I guess you're supposed to get a publicist?' Girls that are in the business now that are successful are more savvy.

Almost six years ago, before I was given the incredible opportunity to be in 'Leaving Las Vegas,' I was going through a long period of artistic confusion. I'd spent years doing work that hadn't pushed me enough, and I was beginning to wonder if I had any talent.

As the only girl growing up among three brothers, I was always afraid of being excluded. If there was a game to be played, a sport to be learned, a competition to join, I was on my feet and ready. I didn't spend much time alone for fear that I'd miss out.

Every experience makes you grow.

For many years, I decided not to do television because I have three children, but now my youngest is finally old enough to be in kindergarten. So I'm not feeling that kind of tug of not being with her as much.

Growing up with three boys in a heavily male-dominated world, I especially needed to express myself as a woman.

I did 'The Karate Kid,' then I just went back to college. I didn't know how much money it made and I didn't have a publicist. I didn't have any sense of the business part of it.

I don't think 'Cocktail' was a perfect critical success, but it touched a vein in our culture.

I feel like my first conversation with someone, I really get a good feeling about who that person is and mainly about how open they are.

I have worked with another first-time director who was not that open, and it was probably one of the worst experiences I ever had, so my antennas are really out.

I may look like the girl next door, but you wouldn't want to live next door to me.

I really love 'Soapdish.' I wish 'Soapdish' had more of a moment because I felt that that is a really strong, funny movie. Kevin Kline is hilarious in that movie.

I was on my own at Wellesley, surrounded by a lot of young women who were motivated and intellectually curious. I started to read because I was required to do so for class, but I soon found myself enjoying the seclusion of the library. I came to see reading as an important way to learn about people, including myself.

It would be really wonderful if people connected to the loneliness of what it means to be a human being in the world today.

Like, that was weird in 'Hamlet 2,' because I played myself there, fully myself, but then I realized, 'Oh, I'm not playing myself. I'm some weird version of myself.' So as an actress, you're always playing something, I don't even know who I am, how could I become me? I don't know what that is.

My mom had started to go to work when I was nine or ten, so I was aware of women trying to find their own identities by working. But I was still influenced by men to such an extreme. I wanted to play their games and wanted to compete in their world and be like them.

People love to talk about how the '70s are the only time they made movies about characters, and adult movies, and complicated people. But in the '80s, they got away with some of those too.

Robert Kennedy was such an inspiring figure. His interest in politics seemed to come not from a desire for power, but from a need to help our society live up to its ideals.

Sometimes when I read about my rebellion in print it sounds a little overrated.

The darker, more complex and emotional the part is, the easier it is for me. But I don't take any of that stuff home with me at the end of the day.

Today I still feel like the most illiterate person ever to have roamed the campuses of Wellesley and Harvard, where I later transferred. I remain intimidated by all the books I haven't read, but over the years I've come to realize that being a student is a lifelong adventure.

To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, singular power of self-respect.

Lucas attended a conference on rational expectations at the University of Minnesota in the spring of 1973. The day after the conference, I received a call from Pittsburgh.

Let your dreams outgrow the shoes of your expectations.

Holidays in general breed unrealistic expectations. The minute you start wondering, 'is it going to be wonderful enough?,' it never will be.

I think my expectations for myself are much more severe and much more direct. You can't work on a film for six years without being your own toughest critic. So you can't really be distracted by the expectations based on your previous performance.

I believe every chess player senses beauty, when he succeeds in creating situations, which contradict the expectations and the rules, and he succeeds in mastering this situation.

They flooded liquidity in the marketplace but the mortgage rate is based much more on expectations of inflation. So if the average investor believes that there is inflation coming, they'll move that rate up.

I'd rather play here in this small bar and just do a good show. Because it's fun and there's no expectations, it's encouragement to be different, do something new.

I do my best not to have any expectations when I go into a movie because it's not fair.

Dreaming is one thing, and working towards the dream is one thing, but working with expectations in mind is very self-defeating.

Don't show off every day, or you'll stop surprising people. There must always be some novelty left over. The person who displays a little more of it each day keeps up expectations, and no one ever discovers the limits of his talent.

The people who don't like it tend to dislike it intensely. That's unfortunate, but not surprising when one deliberately goes against audience expectations.

We will not fail your expectations of us as a new nation dedicated to peace, democracy, and freedom.

The position that I take partly as a result of living in Asia is where you stop living according to your expectations and you become available to experience things as they are.

I want to top expectations. I want to blow you away.

I think the President himself is a remarkably intelligent, decent, ethical man. I think he did very well, but I think the job builds up over expectations which all candidates contribute to including this President that simply cannot be fulfilled.

I've always got such high expectations for myself. I'm aware of them, but I can't relax them.

Even within the band, if I cannot manage to persuade the members of what I see to be the next course of action, how do you expect the group to deal with the expectations of thousands of people. It is not possible.

At MIT, I had the good fortune for seven years to teach network theory, which is basic to many disciplines, to one-third of the undergraduate student body. It was an experiment to see how high we could bring their level of understanding, and it exceeded all of my expectations.

I was grateful to have two weeks to shoot this one scene in Harry Potter. It's a big, big scene, but they have to deliver. And they have high expectations.

We're starting to push the envelope in terms of the expectations, and you can also have your own style, personality and sense of humor, because now we're allowed to.

The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools.