Pain is such an important thing in life. I think that as an artist you have to experience suffering.

We're so afraid of death in our culture, but I think if we understand it better, then we'll appreciate the life we have more.

Pain is such an important thing in life. I think that as an artist you have to experience suffering.

Mum put me in drama classes when I was about 14. I'd been going on about it for some time, so maybe it was a way to shut me up.

It's always nerve-racking to take off your clothes on film. But doing it with a woman felt safer than with a man. You know you can say, 'Don't grab me there: That's where my cellulite is'!

I find myself gravitating towards drama. It interests me. In the books I read, the paintings I like, it's always the darker stuff.

I'm not this dark, twisted person. Yes, I have my demons and this is my way of exorcising them. It gets them out - and better out than in.

The biggest place I look for validation is from my mother. That's the little girl in me that will never grow up.

I'm a tomboy now. I always wanted to fit in with my brother's group, so I climbed trees and played with lead soldiers. But I'm a woman's woman. I never understood women who don't have woman friends.

Oh, I'm definitely a wild child.

I had gotten to a place where I truly believed everything I was called: 'not sexy,' 'not funny,' 'too intense,' desperate.' All those labels they gave me, I took them because there wasn't a trace of my true self left.

There's a set of rules out there somewhere that says it all ends by 40. I hope to be able to defy that because I truly love my work.

It was total naivety that got me to Hollywood. I thought it was going to happen straight away. I told myself 'give it 5 years, there's no way I'll be here after that if it doesn't happen'. Cut to ten years later!

I always love being in the company of women. It's all about good conversation and great wine.

There's a lot of skeletons in my closet, but I know what they're wearing. I'm not gonna act all ashamed of it.

There was a time I was very much blaming the way I felt on L.A, that it was a vacuum of creativity, of humor or anything organic, and I was really angry at the place. But then today I feel completely different - I love L.A.!

If I have to produce movies, direct movies, whatever to change the way Hollywood treats older women, I'll do it. If I have to bend the rules, I will. If I have to break them, I will.

Whatever is said about roles drying up, I intend to keep working. Certainly now the roles couldn't be more interesting - playing mothers, divorcees. I think it's going to be exciting to play a mother of teenagers. The longer your life, the deeper it gets.

That's one of the lucky things about getting the success later on. I know how I want to dress, I know what kind of house I want to live in, I just know more about myself, and that's true about the roles I want to play and what parts of myself I want to express. You're just more in touch with yourself.

You won't find me in a romantic comedy. Those movies don't speak to me. People don't come to talk to me about those scripts, because they probably think I'm this dark, twisted, miserable person.

You have to make peace with yourself. The key is to find the harmony in what you have.

When I had dark hair I definitely felt that I was more anonymous.

On set is where I feel comfortable. The red carpet stuff, talking about the film, explaining your own life, it doesn't come naturally. It's all necessary stuff I suppose but it's not my strength.

As much as my kids keep me young, they also have the reverse effect when I don't have the energy.

I know it's silly, but I still think I'm 28.

I'm not sure why I still think of myself as 28 - maybe that's the point where you start growing up, and then you just feel the same for evermore.

When I was about 14, my family emigrated from England to Australia, and we decided to stop in Bali on the way through.

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

The artist need not know very much; best of all let him work instinctively and paint as naturally as he breathes or walks.

What an artist learns matters little. What he himself discovers has a real worth for him, and gives him the necessary incitement to work.

Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it. The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.

I'm inspired by nature. Other artist's work is important for developing my perception.

There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.

The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does.

To say that an artist sells out means that an artist is making a conscious choice to compromise his music, to to weaken his music for the sake of commercial gain.

What do you say when someone has truly inspired you? How do you express to an artist how deeply their work has affected you?

An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.

When I say artist I mean the man who is building things - creating molding the earth - whether it be the plains of the west - or the iron ore of Penn. It's all a big game of construction - some with a brush - some with a shovel - some choose a pen.

You have to find what makes you stable in the storm. Then, no matter what's happening round you, no matter what the hype or the publicity, you can still manage to make leaps in your work as an artist.

The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.

I've always felt that if one was going to take seriously this vocation as an artist, you have to get beyond that decorative facade.

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.

The most colorful section of a bookstore is the display of SF books, with art by people like Wayne Barlow, who is a terrific artist.

Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.

Let not a man do what his sense of right bids him not to do, nor desire what it forbids him to desire. This is sufficient. The skillful artist will not alter his measures for the sake of a stupid workman.

I so much appreciate it when anybody tries to make something and tries to be an artist - I'm happy to see the work.

The artist is seen like a producer of commodities, like a factory that turns our refrigerators.

I've also been willing to share any help that I could give to any other artist.

An artist, under pain of oblivion, must have confidence in himself, and listen only to his real master: Nature.