Every time an Oscar is given out, an agent gets his wings.

The Oscar changed everything. Better salary, working with better people, better projects, more exposure, less privacy.

It was also wonderful to have the prospect of playing with Jack Nicholson. It was a terrific part, a terrific script, with Alexander Payne and Jack Nicholson. You can't get any better than that!

Jack made it very comfortable for me on the set. We'd met socially before but never worked together. You know, he's very professional, very disciplined and he's always prepared and knows his lines.

Alexander Payne's very specific. His scripts are always complete when you start working on them.

I try to always stretch myself to fit the characters that have been presented.

I look for a role that hopefully I feel empathy with and that I can understand and love, but also that has that challenge for me to play - a different kind of role, a different type of character, a different time period.

I think that being in an environment is a much richer experience than just working on a soundstage.

Every time an Oscar is given out, an agent gets his wings.

After winning the Oscar, I was committed to do 'Fried Green Tomatoes,' but I didn't know what the next thing would be after that. It was a scary time. But the advantage of TV is the regular work. All you need is a hit series, I guess.

And people are always saying: 'Well, you go to Hollywood and you get yourself a film career or a TV series, and then you can do anything you want. Because then you've got the clout.' That had always sounded like a lot of hooey to me, but now I think it's true, unfortunately.

Drama comes more naturally to me. It's the comedy you really have to delve into.

For a long time I did not want to do television because I did not want to get stuck playing the same person. I wanted the ongoing challenge of a variety of roles.

I have always had a problem with my weight.

I have to pay the bills just like everybody else, but it also pays my soul to work.

I haven't talked much about being an ovarian cancer survivor because I don't really want to define myself that way.

I hope I look skinnier in 3D. I hope I don't look three times as fat. That'll be disappointing.

I want to be defined by my own essence.

I was never an ingenue. I've always just been a character actor. When I was younger, it was a real problem, because I was never pretty enough. It was hard, not just for the lack of work, but because you have to face up to how people are looking at you.

I went from years of honing my craft to sudden recognition. It was quite a life changer.

I'm not a stunning woman.

I'm not that conservative. I do feel - I guess I'm more of a Democrat at heart, although I've never affiliated myself with a particular party.

I'm very lucky to be able to do what I love to do, and I hope I can keep doing it for a while.

My mother used to tell this corny story about how the doctor smacked me on the behind when I was born and I thought it was applause, and I have been looking for it ever since.

The roles I was lucky enough to get were real stretches for me: usually a character who was older, or a little weird, or whatever. And it was hard, not just for the lack of work but because you have to face up to how people are looking at you.

By Rice's own standards, the war was well underway by the time he took office. He was a war president the moment he took the oath. But did he act like one?

At the end, the realization is that she had to get to a place in her life where she could drop her guard and make peace with the fact that whether she had a small amount of time, that she had to kind of live it completely through, instead of living by the rules.

It will take a long time, and certainly the West will remain the dominant civilization well into the next century, but the decline is occurring.

I have done things politically, and I've been running a business at the same time, but I sort of joke that to some extent I do more than most legislators have done in their whole careers, and I've been doing it as a part-time job.

I hate wasting people's time.

I just wrote one song at a time. Kinda like an alcoholic. One day at a time.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

The work that we do during the winter is very important; we have a new bike and it's important to develop it during this time, and we start with this test.

Fortunately, I happened to go east at a time when live television was centered in New York.

I want to spend more time with those kids. I want to dedicate my time to train those kids and teach them what it takes, what they need to do to get to this level.

Public opinion polls are rather like children in a garden, digging things up all the time to see how they're growing.

Sitting at home the way I do, I'd just love the hear from people. It'd be a great help in passing the time.

When it is time to get to work, I go away completely and don't do anything except the work. And that can be 16 hours a day.

You look at the whole Human Rights questions, I happened to be there at just the right time when the country was awakening - this goes to the first question you asked - the whole country was awakening to a hundred years of injustice that hadn't been resolved yet.

Compared to today's salaries, our cut was minuscule but it was very good for the time.

They haul you up there for, you know, week after week in this kind of star chamber proceeding. Then at the end of it they say, well, we found nothing, but now it's time for special counsel.

When I did the record, I was coming off a time when my contract had been sold and the music industry had changed a lot. I didn't understand how to make records for big labels. I was waiting for a new kind of record label to emerge.

Hell, if I'd jumped on all the dames I'm supposed to have jumped on, I'd have had no time to go fishing.

I've danced one time in my life. It was the most mortifying experience I ever had.

At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent.

I had a wonderful time with the Stones but after 31 years, I thought it was time to move on.

Awards were made in Hollywood, in whatever the time it was created. They're to promote each other's movies. You give me an award, I give you an award and people will believe that we are great movies and they'll go to see them. It's still the same.

To do theater you need to block off a hunk of time.

I have my own language and it's high time I put a little of it out there.