And it is very sexy as well: somebody says I'm taking you on a surprise date, you don't know where you are going and you can't see and then you put your hand out and there is a tiger. Amazing.

When the time came to make a decision about what do in life, I found myself thinking that acting was the thing I loved to do, so I applied to drama school. And then, I didn't get in - twice.

When I did get home this last time, we had all these plans to go out. And then we hardly stepped outside because the time together seemed too precious.

I don't think I will be less good because there's less pressure on me.

My husband. He keeps me grounded. If I were in the world on my own, it would all be much more seductive. But I'm in a relationship that has nothing to do with the film world.

You have to play the logic of a character.

During Breaking The Waves, I was on my own in a hotel room. I think I would have been impossible to live with. When you go home, you have to pretend to be the person you are at home.

It's a whole different kind of anxiety. But the great thing about doing a theatre job is that once the ball starts rolling you just have to go with it, it's inexorable.

It's an incredible privilege for an actor to look into the camera. It's like looking right into the heart of the film, and you can't take that lightly.

I was a normal, rather dutiful child. I didn't even rebel as a teenager.

I always think I am going to do my best.

I grew up without a television. It meant that I read lots of books and entertained myself.

The film Punch - Drunk Love is how you see the world when you're in love. You don't see somebody's psychological baggage necessarily, you see the person walking out of the light.

Yeah, a lot of people think I'll be a tortured nutcase when they meet me.

My character Lena is somebody who responds to people in a very simple way. I didn't have to take myself off to a darkened room to concentrate, I just had to try and be open. It's an interesting, subtle relationship.

I think so, Silence of the Lambs was a great, suspenseful thriller and I would expect Red Dragon to be similar. And I think it's very character driven.

And it is very sexy as well: somebody says I'm taking you on a surprise date, you don't know where you are going and you can't see and then you put your hand out and there is a tiger. Amazing.

As actors, we went where we wanted to, and the camera followed us: it was like having another person in the room. There was no formal structure to the process. It was very liberating.

I've always been creative, I think.

I do think you feel a little bit like you are preying on people's lives.

I don't know what makes a marriage work. My husband and I don't have it right at all; it's very tough on him. From the outside it looks like it's all about me - I have a glorious career and he doesn't.

I have to be a lot more calculating because I'm a very private person. I actually really struggle with the attention; I'm generally a pretty shy kind of a person. So it's tough figuring out how to manage it. But there are ways of managing it, and you just have to be smart.

I sometimes feel like it's difficult for people to relate to me, until they spend, like, a day with me, and until they walk around with me in public.

I was a pretentious child. I grew up without a television. I read a lot of books and I loved Shakespeare. Still do.

In my early career I was like a goldfish. Rejection didn't affect me; I'd just forget how bad it was and keep going back for more.

Believing in God is a very intense inner struggle of mine. Its something I worry about a lot but which I dont have the answer to.

No matter how famous and established they were or however blessed they were with great songs or long careers, if they lived alone, they lived alone. That's not the way I wanted to live prior to the tour or after.

I go to correctional facilities and talk to kids there. They have little kids in there who are, like, 12 years old, stealing cars and stuff like that.

Writers can feel pretty powerless in the big corporate world of publishing, but sometimes our greatest power is the ability to say 'no.'

Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique.

You know, once you've stood up to cancer, everything else feels like a pretty easy fight.

People are used to being coddled.

I am never bored, never short of anything to do and I don't even ever feel lonely. I am quite gregarious and I get out and about a lot, but sometimes it is just wonderful to be on your own.

If the Negroes are to remain forever removed from the producing atmosphere, and the present discrimination continues, there will be nothing left for them to do.

I think that much of the truth has been withheld from the American people.

I believe I am strengthening the Constitution with my case.

He cares about the needy and was always available to help in any capacity.

The fans sing my name around the world. When I meet fans, they ask, 'How are you? All good with your family?'

I got my own back.

That's one of the unintended consequences of the women's liberation movement - that, in fact, the women that would lead this country would be feminine, they would be pro-family, they would have husbands, they would love their children.

I look like an accountant. And no offense to accountants! There's some really cool accountants out there.

If you were summoned for jury duty and you didn't show up, what would happen? You'd be in jail!

I dream that someday the step between my mind and my finger will no longer be needed. And that simply by blinking my eyes, I shall make pictures. Then, I think, I shall really have become a photographer.

My mindset at this stage, especially after having a daughter... it's just changed my whole outlook.

I'd imagine my wedding as a fairy tale... huge, beautiful and white.

People say I've gone against Hollywood, but I've tried to be independent within Hollywood, tried to be my own person.

I grew up in an era where you had to find your own way as a woman. When I was a kid, there was this whole physical and emotional neatness and purity that a woman was supposed to have, and I didn't fit into that.

It's not the teaching, it's the learning.

The quality of an organization can never exceed the quality of the minds that make it up.