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.

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.

I would hope that we could have this in an adult fashion and stop demagogueing the issue anytime you talk about any substantive reforms that will actually save social security and save Medicare and save the system from imploding on itself.

Today more than ever we need creative minds to address the issues of the age. And one of the most urgent is this: How can humanity know so much, achieve so much, and still fail so many people so badly?

Charity brings to life again those who are spiritually dead.

In a company, you buy thousands of things. Every item you buy has its own footprint.

Design should be easy in the sense that every step should be obviously and clearly identifiable. Simplify elements to make change simple so you can manage the technical risk.

The notion that the 'leader' has the right to ask huge sacrifices of your generation for a notional future paradise - if you'd be good enough to lie down under the wheels of the juggernaut - that sentimental and self-aggrandising rationalisation for brute force and cowardice I felt from adolescence was wrong.

My mom insisted on multigrain bread and never allowed soda in the house.

I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.

Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated has not the art of getting drunk.

The easiest way to double your money is to fold it in half and put it in your pocket.

A good ad which is not run never produces sales.

I loved teaching, but every day that I went to work, I carried the worry that I was hurting my kids because I wasn't at home with them.

A lot of funny stuff happens in Canada.

If there's one perk, it's being the quarterback of America's team and being able to make a difference off the field.

By the time I was in sixth grade I could bound every country in the world from memory.

If you have some idea you believe in, don't listen to the croaking chorus. Listen only to what your own inner voice tells you.

My favorite thing to do is not act - it's that simple.

When I was in college, I started an improv group, and I did a bunch of plays and some musicals. I have a theater degree. I'm a school person: I like getting homework and having deadlines. When I graduated, I worked right away as an actor.

I feel like my peers now are artists like Madonna and the Stones, Michael Jackson and Prince. These are people who were able to take their careers beyond the normal here-today-gone-tomorrow life span.

In November 2000, the Republicans stole from America our most precious right of all: the right to free and fair elections... Now President Bush occupies the White House, but with questionable legitimacy.

Zeal will do more than knowledge.

To this day, I don't like people walking on stage not looking good. You have to look good. If you feel special about yourself then you're going to play special.

I first started acting in primary school, just doing little plays. And from the moment I began, something just went 'click' inside me. Suddenly I wasn't shy anymore. Instead I felt confident and happy. I can remember the enormous sense of relief it gave me. I loved the feeling of making people laugh.