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.

Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.

When I left, I had learnt nothing. I took nothing with me. At least, that's what I thought then.

Fiscal decentralisation does not lead to higher economic growth because economic growth is much more driven by factors other than taxes and spending, e.g. increases in technological progress and improved human capital.

I developed this fantasy world. I found that that was much more fun and more interesting and exciting than real life was to me. Then, once I got the guitar going when I was a teenager, I set sail for the direction I've been in my whole life.

I can still remember the first time I heard Tori Amos. It was the fall of 1993, and I was in the back of a colossal '79 Lincoln Coupe Mark V, embarking on some otherwise forgettable road trip somewhere in the Deep South.

Sky and clouds and trees and little figures relaxing in the perfect rural rhythm of their surroundings: these are the staples of a Gainsborough landscape.

Then, like an old-time orator impressively he rose; I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes.

Tennis was a white, upper-class sport, and I wanted it to be treated like other sports were.

I work out five days a week for 20 minutes; I only do one body part a day.

I think we have very steady records of President Putin, who inherited the country with democratic values.

Conversely, I came to realize that being good at something is hardly a reason to avoid doing it.

I wasn't very funny or flashy, I was kind of boring.

The pain of today is the victory of tomorrow.

When I met Rachel Robinson for the first time, she is a regal woman, and she was like a grandmother in that first meeting.

A musician's attempt to summarize his or her work leads to all this prescriptive chatter, or what I call the 'Modifier's Madness.' A lot of adjectives working overtime.

To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage

The reason I did the book about holidays is that you're a different person on holiday. You're sleeping somewhere unfamiliar, knocking about with people you've never met and for 10 days you're someone else. You're out of your comfortable zone.

Hesitancy in judgment is the only true mark of the thinker.

I've honestly never worked with Beyonce. It would be awesome, though; I would love that.

Democracy is liberty - a liberty which does not infringe on the liberty nor encroach on the rights of others; a liberty which maintains strict discipline, and makes law its guarantee and the basis of its exercise. This alone is true liberty; this alone can produce true democracy.

If you go into a relationship expecting someone else to fill you up, you're doomed right off.

The hate directed against the colored people here in St. Louis has always given me a sad feeling... How can you expect the world to believe in you and respect your preaching of democracy when you yourself treat your colored brothers as you do?

Waste no time with revolutions that do not remove the causes of your complaints but simply change the faces of those in charge.