Most of us are not real eager to grow, myself included. We try to be happy by staying in the status quo. But if we're not willing to be honest with ourselves about what we feel, we don't evolve.

Sometimes I feel as if four thousand years of silencing women, of the fear of women who were burned in oil or eviscerated in front of their daughters, is imprinted deep within me and has altered my DNA.

Thankfully, it became clear to me that when I compete, I lose my connection to the passion I have for my work.

You don't stay married for thirty-nine years because of sex or even because of love, but because your partner is a real friend to you, because they respect and regard you.

I talk to women's groups all over the country and see women struggling with this. The fear of not being accepted, of being different, of not having a man, all make it hard for a woman to do what she really believes is right for her.

I think it's because most of us talk one way and live another. There are a few people who truly, truly walk the talk.

Most of us are not real eager to grow, myself included. We try to be happy by staying in the status quo. But if we're not willing to be honest with ourselves about what we feel, we don't evolve.

When my children were born, I didn't have them baptized because I felt baptism was about erasing Original Sin - something the Church said children got from their mother - and I absolutely refused to believe women carry Original Sin.

God is not something I think about but something I experience as an energy, a Presence. I do find it easier to pray to a female Presence or an androgynous Presence.

My husband is a fall-away Catholic, but with a vengeance. He's actually more of a feminist than I am.

I sometimes truly despair at ever being meaningfully altered and affected by the things I claim are so important to me.

I think we're socialized out of being women, and then we have to find our way back to it. That's hard to do.

Stories about the ongoing dramas in our lives as we age are not being told because women find it difficult to be honest about what's going on - about, for example, our heightened sexuality as we age or about living in a society that only values youth.

Winning is everything in Hollywood.

I think we have to be careful about what we label as a prerequisite for spirituality. I don't think you have to know a lot to have a spiritual life, but knowing gives life richness.

I feel it most in my work, because there aren't roles about women who are spiritually evolving. That anyone would even write something like that, something that's worth doing, would be a miracle!

When I was a kid, I'd kneel down at the side of my bed every night before I went to sleep, and my mother and I would say a Greek prayer to the Virgin Mary.

The rest of us are still trying to find ways to live in the world with spirit-ual values. Myself included. We've learned certain skills, we've learned to prevail somewhat, but we've not made it over the mountain.

So I constantly play women who are damaged and out of touch, who are seeking without knowing, or knowing without the skills to transform their lives. But then, that's really the fate of many women today.

Follow your heart, your instincts. People might try to dissuade you from your passion, but no one can live your life but you.

Routinely, when I finish a book, I think 'What will I do? Where will I get an idea?' And a kind of low-level panic sets in.

What is true of the individual will be tomorrow true of the whole nation if individuals will but refuse to lose heart and hope.

I want to make someone walk straight, but I've left my sons nothing but wars.

I don't know how long my body will allow me to compete, but I can't imagine doing anything else. That day will come, and I just hope there'll be a light shining down a path telling me where to go.

I get burned out on standup. But I like acting. I do like it. But sometimes you just feel like a monkey. You just feel like a complete tool. But I like it. I do like it. Stand-up is just more free. A lot more freedom because you just do what you want to do.

Mozart is my first strength.

You've got to get up every morning with determination if you're going to bed with satisfaction.

That's a great team we lost to. It just wasn't our day.

To feel our ills is one thing, but to cure them is another.

I am strong and capable.

Sufficient to say greed is a deadly deed. You shall not covet your neighbors goods.

It is the liberal philosophy, not the conservative one, that views humans as selfish automatons.

Everything about mediocrity kills me.

'Bake Off' is one of my favourite programmes, so I was genuinely a little bit shocked and very excited when I was asked to take part.

People who believe in freedom of expression have spent several centuries fighting against censorship, in whatever form. We have to be certain the 'Net' doesn't become the site for technological book burning.

Local politics, like everything else, are not what they used to be. But the fact is that our political system - like our physical existence - still breaks down along geographical lines.

I'm not accustomed to taking a swing at a woman's head. That's not in my DNA.

In any restaurant, my eyes alight first, as if by an atavistic pull, on the meat dishes on the menu. In any dinner party I throw, I think of the non-vegetarian dish as central. I view this as a combination of weakness, greed and moral failure. Someone please help.

The most important attribute a player must have is mental toughness.

I had done a fair bit of traveling during the holidays in my school days with my guitar and discovered that I could live on it. Admittedly, I traveled with a sleeping bag but I could always find somewhere to lay my head.

I don't think of them as teenage songs. The things that happen to you in high school are the same things that happen your entire life. You can fall in love at 60; you can get rejected at 80.

I like the OMG Girlz. They're real and they're friends.

When President George W. Bush attempted to reform Social Security, that proposal was more unpopular with Americans than the Iraq war. People love their entitlements.

Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber is the greatest bad guy in a movie ever.