And there's no way I'm going to do Dame Edna.

It sounds ideal, a sort of beach childhood. But it wasn't really. I didn't use the beach very much at all.

You can't please all the people all the time.

And there's no way I'm going to do Dame Edna.

But I hope that you walk around the corner and you get very surprised.

You can have a laugh in Los Angeles, or you can weep in Los Angeles, depending on your attitude towards it.

Insecurity, commonly regarded as a weakness in normal people, is the basic tool of the actor's trade.

It makes me feel resilient when you tackle different things.

Somebody referred to me as a ringleader, which I wouldn't have classed myself as, but anyway, there you go.

I would rather do many small roles on TV, stage or film than one blockbuster that made me rich but had no acting.

Feminism was a dirty word for a while.

For years, I never knowingly went on a holiday. When I travelled, it was for work. Now I am a huge advocate, particularly to places which have amazing wildlife, such as Antarctica, India and Patagonia.

I carry music in my head, so I don't need more. It drives me nuts that, in hotels or on boats, people seem to think you need music 24 hours a day.

I don't necessarily wait for that massive leading role. I want to keep the juices flowing.

I have no idea what my persona would be. As far as I'm concerned, I'm changing all the time.

I like the personality of the Belgians. They're deeply eccentric, which is something that comes across in their design - terrific.

I need my friends, I need my house, I need my garden.

I wouldn't want to go back to my 20s; they were pretty angst-laden times.

I'm not someone who can lie on a beach and do nothing. I am not sure what you are supposed to do, so I get bored. I prefer to have a purpose, such as going to Alaska to see orca whales.

If I don't believe in a role, I can't pull it off.

If you only took on roles that had the same qualities, then I suppose it might make a critic feel better, if he can see some kind of bedrock. Perhaps that's the old definition of a star, someone who's always going to come up with the same goods. But it intimates limitation to me and I don't want to think of the job like that.

In my industry, everybody wants to know everything about you, and it's just dumb. I think the only way of maintaining some of that mystique is by not giving away too much about yourself. It has served me well so far. I never want to feel up for grabs.

It's difficult to keep in touch with someone when you're moving around all the time. I've decided that you can have it all, but you can't have it all, all of the time.

It's the idea that when you say 'actress', people think of an airy, floaty, no-brain person, which of course you can't be if you are an actor. It is an unfortunate word, which is why, for a time, I hung on to 'actor', because it just seemed more workmanlike, you know, like you say 'woman doctor' not 'doctoress'.

London keeps me grounded. We don't get praised every time we open our gobs there.

The writing is the springboard for your intuitive stuff and then you see, maybe a colour of what you want to achieve. Then you bring in the technique you've learnt. But when you're on film, you're not always in control of that. That's what makes me believe in a kind of collective unconscious, a sort of experience you draw on.

Why did I not stop to have children? I suppose because the opportunity didn't present itself. Yes, many women feel they are not complete without having children, but I have different creative outlets.

Most people are overconfident about their own abilities. That is probably a good thing. But we would be horrified if a physician's aide engaged in heart surgery.

Hollywood is a place where they place you under contract instead of under observation.

All that I know I learned after I was thirty.

We begin to die from the moment we are born for birth is the cause of death. The nature of decay is inherent in youth the nature of sickness is inherent in health in the midst of life we are verily in death.

Rising up from the ashes airing those flickering flame. Ill reassemble myself becoming the goddess of flame.

I haven't had that good a time in ages. Since September 11, really. I just felt so happy, it was like the sun came out of the clouds for me. I love Italy.

This is Romney's biggest political weakness. His policy flip-flops and the general sense that he's not comfortable in his own skin leads voters, including many supporters, wondering about his core values.

It doesn't matter how old I get, I always act like an excited five year-old kid with severe ADD and a waddle at Disneyland.

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

The center will be fully operational in two years' time, but probably in the middle of the year we will have a temporary laboratory of 4,000 square feet.

Although it requires some adjustment by those already here, immigration has made the U.S.A. the most prosperous nation on Earth.

Spring is sooner recognized by plants than by men.

I've never boxed in my life, never been in a military base in my life, never grew up with anyone in the military.

The entire economy, of course, is locked in a down cycle right now. Last time we weathered this was during another Bush presidency in '90. We were locked in it for a year and a half and everyone came out of it.

I know it's so 'in' to be blase, but that's not going to get you anywhere.

You dont earn loyalty in a day. You earn loyalty day by day.

I would love to have seen a male-female relationship that had nothing to do with falling in love, I'd love to prove, even on TV - even if it's not true! - that men and women can be friends without any kind of involvement.

I never thought of myself as a songwriter. I was just an artist writing songs, and they just happened to get placed.

It's true that I have a wide range of interests. I like to write and paint and make music and go walking on my own and garden. In fact, gardening is probably what I enjoy doing more than anything else.

In the past, we spoke of poverty, misery only in the south. Now there is a lot of misery, a lot of bad that creates victims in the north as well. This has become manifest: the global system was not made to serve the good of all, but to serve multinational companies.

We can't just pay attention to women who look fantastic in a photograph, because there are a lot of people that have fantastic things to say that don't look like 25-year-old white models.

I liked working in a series, going to work every day and not having to leave town for long locations. I was producing them and building an audience.