Being is like pretending.

I take the responsibility of choosing seriously because it becomes an indelible part of your body of work. Something has to sing to me.

When I was 5, my mother threw a party, and a friend and I wrote and performed a play called The Dutch Doll.

There are all kinds of other things I could do, things I would probably like, but only acting would give me emotional fulfillment.

I was offered one of the roles in a big project that shall remain nameless. I thought the whole thing encouraged violent sex crimes toward women. It made horrible, ghastly rape violence seem sexy. I just didn't want to sign my name to it.

My major in college was Chinese Studies. It was very intentional.

I had started off, before I ever got an acting job, working at Robert De Niro's Tribeca Productions as a reader. I was always interested in that side of the camera.

Acting is doing, because everything you say or do is some kind of an action, some kind of a verb. You're always connected to the other person through some kind of action.

The Oscars have become such a big deal these days that it's just used as adjective.

I assume that if people get to know me, they'll like me. If they don't, it's not my problem.

Once you've found something you know how to do, it makes you feel you don't have to be intimidated by someone.

It's the relationships between people that are more important than the sort of far away fantasies of what the good life is, the world of supermodels and Bud ads.

The name game is frustrating. Agents will say, They love you, but they're going to offer it to Julia Roberts first.

I had been looking for a New York apartment, but I said, Why not give LA a go?

We all struggle with our failure to communicate and our failure to reach beyond fear to love people.

I have learned to pare down what I do and still be effective and strong in a role.

I could have seen myself going into academia, but I don't love it; I just like it.

I hope that doing truthful portrayals of people in a variety of circumstances gives people a kind of subterranean link to those characters.

My father taught me how to substitute realities.

Being is like pretending.

I'll talk to myself out loud a lot.

I had a Christian upbringing - it was all about sin and guilt. I was very happy just kissing people. I was like the make-out queen - not even second base.

I wanted to do something far from my intellectual and physical home, so I went to live in Beijing for eight months and took Mandarin Chinese.

I want my life to effect the balance to the positive.

Sometimes I feel limited by people's perceptions of what I can and cannot do, or what I do or don't look like.

I have a hard time getting motivated to do something that seems like a career move. I've gotten into vague trouble with my agents for turning down work that I thought was exploitative.

I hate it when people use sex as a weapon against the people who are engaging in it. It's so hypocritical.

There was something about being in front of audiences when I was in elementary school plays that gave me a thrill. It was like the rush you get from a roller coaster drop.

Now that I've got some films under my belt, I have the courage of my convictions regarding acting. It gives me a leg to stand on.

I try to become more humble and more myself with every year. There was a while when I got famous where I was so confused and my head was spinning.

I'm doing things that are more artistic again, more close to the material that I love. I don't disparage those things that I did. They're just not as much reflective of who I am.

I always feel I can play a role - just give me the time to do the preparation and I'll be it.

Acting is what happens on the way.

I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.

What I try to do for my readers is to pass on some of the things that I found out about being thirteen after doing it for forty years.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

Young people discovering their sexuality must know they walk with a strong tradition and that they are not alone. They have a right to information without being pressured.

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, three hours in a seasick steamer, and after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak three times, and then I'll be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

I don't like being recognised, I have no interest in being famous at all, I just do what I do. If I could be like Captain Kirk and beam myself up and then beam myself down, I would!

I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say.

Being a musician is what I do, but it's not what I am.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.

We've had it very clear to the Bosnians that our obligation to equip and train their forces is completely conditional on the foreign forces being gone.

My parents were amazing people who had no business being together - and they knew it.

Teachers started recognizing me and praising me for being smart in science and that made me want to be even smarter in science!