I am a smoker, I'm ashamed to say. I had given it up for many years, then picked it up again. It's a horrible habit. I struggle with myself all the time. And I love to smoke.

I have some close friends I keep in touch with. I knit. I watch a little too much TV. I ski, if the weather's right for that. If I can find a group of buddies, I go rock climbing.

That's probably the biggest secret of acting: If the actor believes it themselves, they can make you believe it.

I am a smoker, I'm ashamed to say. I had given it up for many years, then picked it up again. It's a horrible habit. I struggle with myself all the time. And I love to smoke.

An actor has to be very, very careful, as one of the most wonderful props - and actors love props - is a cigarette. There's so much to do with it: you can bring it up to your face, play with the smoke. It's just the greatest - ever since I was 16 and in acting school in England, I've been playing around with cigarettes.

Being an actor on a movie set is like going to the playground at recess.

The climate informs the character.

There were not enough women like Kay on TV and now there are none.

The power of television - it's so present in our lives, we don't even know how powerful it is.

Acting is the business of truth, so that we can see ourselves reflected back and learn.

An actor's life is fairly lonely.

I haven't had a lot of experience with glamour. I've never had to mask myself, as many now not-so-young actresses have had to do. Female actors in that regard have a different lot in life than male actors.

I mean, the unfair treatment of women and black people and Indians and other groups, that's real. Mistreatment of other people because 'I'm better than you are' is such a sad part of the world.

I think the funny thing about acting for me - and I hold it in a very holy, spiritual way - not to be overly fundamentalist about it, but it's that important to me - is that it is an ancient healing art.

I think there has only been one time in my entire career that I've ever gone back to shoot a scene. And it was a scene that, when we were shooting it, we knew that it wasn't working. We knew there was a disagreement between the actor and director. So, we went back.

I think this notion of acting and glamour is getting in everybody's way.

I'm a very lucky girl who gets to act for a living! So why sit around griping and grousing about what's not there.

I'm not particularly fond of the hybrid writer-director or actor-director.

I'm very old-school. I like a director to direct me. I like to be the actor.

People often expect me to be something other than what I am.

Supporting actors are the support. You can't make a building without support. You can't buy dinner without support.

The key to acting has much more to do with listening than with talking.

Through all of this lovely interviewing, and nice things people say, and the rest of it, I have learned that I am an actor. That is my profession. That is my job. That is how I make a living. So I am just out there making a living.

To get the hippie out of certain characters is probably the most difficult thing for me. I was not a hippie by choice but by birth.

To play someone when the character masks their own emotions, doesn't understand their own emotions, has no release for their own emotions, and yet is full of emotion - that is a much harder character to play than someone who has somewhere to put it.

Well, I don't think of myself as a feminist at all. As soon as we start labeling and categorizing ourselves and others, that's going to shut down the world.

You know, when I got started on television in the '80s, you would go to the costume department, and if you were a female they put you into a skirt. And you had a pocketbook, usually a shoulder bag.

They have not always elected the best leaders, particularly after a long period in which they have not used this facility of free election. You tend to lose the habit.

In the past 3-4 years I've developed a habit of keeping numerous small cassette recorders in my house and in a bag with me so that I'm able to commit to tape memory song ideas on a constant basis.

Marriage is a very good thing, but I think it's a mistake to make a habit out of it.

I'm a creature of habit. I go to restaurants all the time and stuff.

Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.

Men even contract the dirty, filthy habit of chewing tobacco, and when the habit gets a good hold upon them they are never satisfied except when they have a wad of the stuff in their mouth. So with drinking. It is largely a habit.

When you do the wrong thing, knowing it is wrong, you do so because you haven't developed the habit of effectively controlling or neutralizing strong inner urges that tempt you, or because you have established the wrong habit and don't know how to eliminate them effectively.

Habit is a great deadener.

Make it a habit to tell people thank you. To express your appreciation, sincerely and without the expectation of anything in return. Truly appreciate those around you, and you'll soon find many others around you. Truly appreciate life, and you'll find that you have more of it.

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.

The accent got lost somewhere along the way. I'm a little embarrassed about it. When I arrived in LA I assumed I'd be able to put on the American accent. It proved difficult so I had six months working with a dialect coach and it's become a habit.

Professors simply can't discuss a thing. Habit compels them to deliver a lecture.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.

No habit or quality is more easily acquired than hypocrisy, nor any thing sooner learned than to deny the sentiments of our hearts and the principle we act from: but the seeds of every passion are innate to us, and nobody comes into the world without them.

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.

My writing has to support more than my research habit, but I love to curl up with a book about some dusty corner of history.

The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests.

I applaud the American Cancer Society for all they do to eradicate smoking. Their local, state and national efforts help to discourage young people from taking up this deadly habit and the resources they provide have helped numerous smokers quit.

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.

Get the habit of analysis - analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind.

Life never becomes a habit to me. It's always a marvel.