I feel so gratified about having finished college. I learned how to articulate myself. It gave me confidence more than anything. And also the ability to analyze the text.

A play is much easier to maintain your personal life with because if you're rehearsing, you're working like from 11 to 6 or 11 to 5 and you get to have your whole morning and your whole evening. When you're doing the play, you have all day.

I think sex is very interesting for most people, but I'm interested in sex as a way of communication, I'm not that interested in the fantasy version of a sex scene.

I made a movie where I played a girl that just got out of prison and we shot it very very quickly but very intensely-that took me a long time to get over.

I think Secretary's funny, it is about sex, and there's a lot of sex in it, sex is the key, but you're talking about a lot of other complicated things.

There was something to me that was really compelling about that woman, already knowing she couldn't get pregnant. When I made that movie I was maybe 24, and to be 24 and already know you can't get pregnant, that was really interesting to me.

We were lounging around in this beautiful house in LA, and I'm coming from NY, so sometimes when we weren't working I would just sit on those folding chairs.

Most people are interested in seeing 27-year-old women who are in movies somehow connected to sex. It's interesting to everyone. Especially little movies that are having trouble getting made, there's always sex.

A big part of being an actress specifically is feeling entitled to your artistic opinion, feeling that it means something, and being able to stand by it.

I feel so gratified about having finished college. I learned how to articulate myself. It gave me confidence more than anything. And also the ability to analyze the text.

You have a right to your opinion about the work that you're doing. An artist is as equally important as the director. If you believe that, you can work in any circumstances.

On a film, I was always acting. I was either changing my clothes really quickly and wiping off the lipstick and putting on the other lipstick and then working constantly, constantly.

I studied English literature; I took 2 independent religion classes, but I wasn't a religion major really.

I feel there is no shortage of real interesting women's roles. But I found them and did all of them just now.

Ten years ago, it was really difficult for a young actress to walk onto a set and disagree with the director and having that be OK and have a conversation about it and everyone be cool with it.

I liked that idea. Someone who's trying to perform herself and not succeeding.

Having an education is invaluable.

Who can I trust? You have to invest in somebody and chances are you're probably going to invest in somebody who's going to deceive you. I've been conned a couple of times, but now I'm a little more savvy.

I want to have some effect on the way the world works in whatever way I can, and I also want to have the power to help get the movies that I think are important made.

I'm still trying to figure out what the right line is between myself and the people I play. Sometimes I go too far one way or too far the other.

You're not going to do good work if you're not choosing something because it inspires you.

I don't see that many movies lately that are actually about something, that are trying to challenge something about the way that people interact.

Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them - regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or economic circumstances.

Never underestimate a child's ability to get into more trouble.

We have developed this unbelievable ability to deny. We have to. If we didn't, we'd go crazy.

To know how to hide one's ability is great skill.

It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.

The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.

Handcuffing the ability of states and localities to develop clean fuels in the cheapest possible way, using local resources, is not sound or sensible policy.

I realised from a very early age that God gave me a gift, and that gift was to run, and I wanted to use it to the best of my ability.

My vocal ability is very limited, but I'm fortunate in that I can write the songs around my vocal limitations.

The key to Operations at Wal-Mart is their ability to maintain the highest standards while at the same time getting things done with lockstep execution.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

The Stones are a different kind of group. I realized that when I joined them. It's not really so much their musical ability, it's just they have a certain kind of style and attitude which is unique.

I liked his ability to deal with a lot of the negativity that surrounded him. Even though he was in a world that he didn't want to be in, he still saw the bigger picture.

We have the most flexible and adaptive economy. Making sure we sustain the ability of the American economy to perform well is really the priority of economic policy.

The system that enables the most people to earn the most success is free enterprise, by matching up people's skills, interests, and abilities. In contrast, redistribution simply spreads money around. Even worse, it attenuates the ability to earn success by perverting economic incentives.

Excellence is the unlimited ability to improve the quality of what you have to offer.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

Get that right, then- if you get the quality right, then the marketability or whatever; your ability to sell videos or your ability to earn money or whatever, will follow naturally. But try to be creatively lead rather than market lead. And that's important to me.

You have to open your mind. I like the ability to express myself in a deep way. It's the closest music to our humanity - it's like a folk music that rises up out of a culture.

I ask the American people to consider the legacy this administration has handed us in the defense budget as we spend billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars without the tools and ability to track these dollars.

I didn't have any problem bonding with Honey, but I was plagued with insecurities about my ability to bring up my baby.

The greatest luck that I've had has been the ability to find men and women who came into my administration who worked with me and brought extraordinary talents that we were able to take full advantage of.

My power is the ability to control water molecules and form them into ice.

Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation.

I respect people who feel things passionately. I do. But when someone is a judge, that is not what they should bring to the bench. It is not really passion, except in rare instances, that serves the bench well. It is, rather, an ability to understand the law and follow it.

In the last four years under the Patriot Act, we have seen a great increase in the ability of law enforcement officials to investigate and track terrorists.

The genius of the economic machine is in its ability to convert these indulgences into profitability. It converts desire into attention, a grip on our eyeballs and eardrums, which in turn can be marketed to advertisers.