I always think I am going to do my best.

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.

Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It's about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.

I remember playing with some friends and being aware that I was acting as I was playing with them - I would think of a character and pretend to be someone else.

I wanted to be famous; I wanted to perform. Those things I really, really wanted more than anything else.

I was badly bullied when I was in the seventh grade - relentlessly, mercilessly - by a group of 12-year-old girls. And it left me with a determination that no matter what, I had to throw my shoulders back, stick out my chin, and project a sense that no one and nothing could hurt me. That turned out to be a life-changing mistake.

I'd like to think there's still a lot for me to do, you know?

I hope you will no longer accuse me of a lack of delicacy. as I now count on your understanding.

As an actor, I love working with directors. As much as I love working with other actors.

I graduated with a B.A. from Goddard College in 1991 and then studied poetry for a year in the M.F.A. in Writing Program at Vermont College.

I had a very erratic career. I got very famous for a minute and then it just all went away, you know?

We really need to change taxation policy so that it is not skewed against owning more than one house.

I can't not write, if I don't then I get really depressed.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

But I think the bomb instead constitutes merely a first step in a new control by man over the forces of nature too revolutionary and dangerous to fit into old concepts.

Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels to be warriors for Good accept the demagogy of the angels. Things are clearly more complicated.

Today's white majority is largely silent about the race question.

I feel like regardless of whether or not I win this award or I win that award or I don't win this award - I'm still Sam at the end of the day. And that's what defines me.

Why must we be eternally on our knees before the Kants and Hugos?

I was in bands, but they were punk bands, and you plug in the guitars, you turn them up really loud, you've got four or five other people on stage with you, you've got some protection from when they throw lighters. You can always hide behind the lead singer or the bass player.

To the extent that '60s guys own things, yes... but I don't have the publishing, just like most '60s guys, and that was an error, you know... part ownership in publishing was the kind of era that started a little bit later, when real businessmen started to manage artists.

My parents were hippies. They met at an ashram, where they were studying how to be enlightened.

I think the important thing is that I've never tried to be someone I'm not. People can read right through that.

It's just six of one and half-a-dozen of the other.

Anybody could write a bad script, and I'm one of them, you know?