But no, had I been successful in my 20s I would have been just fine. But it is nice to defy the odds.

But I have had the luxury of working on good films with great people.

I love writers. All of my best friends are writers.

If my gravy train stops at SAG, honey, it's been a great ride.

But no, had I been successful in my 20s I would have been just fine. But it is nice to defy the odds.

I'll read a script maybe twice, but I'll think about the role more than I'll rehearse lines.

The odds are not in your favor the older you get, especially if you're a woman in this business.

And I have a really great agent and I know it's almost an oxymoron to say you have a smart agent. But she is and she has a beautiful aesthetic and she has guided me.

I'm still traumatized that I'm going to be on a big screen in a white bikini and naked so who knows!

It's never easy with characters in these dark and grave circumstances but that's my job.

I don't like a lot of rehearsing.

New Orleans. Born and raised. I lived there until I was 19.

I'm obsessed. I've always needed to know what's going on but now it's a must.

And now oddly I'm getting sexier parts than I've ever gotten.

Holly Hunter has been doing great work forever.

Well did graduate summa cum laude from Fordham University.

See, the SAG awards caught me totally by surprise.

You're always close and you never get that big romantic lead.

I think it kind of took being a character actor to kind of now enter into leading ladies.

The majority of work I do is in independent films, where you're lucky if you have five takes.

I'm really a director's actor. I rely heavily on a director.

I think it would be hard to go the distance in this business without a sense of humor.

I always try to approach character first and foremost viscerally.

I think it's always harder in a film to convey intimacy.

Why are comedic parts for women the exception, not the rule?

I just have a thing for writers. Maybe it because I'm just so not a writer.

I have to watch the news or my day is not complete.

I must stress here the point that I appreciate clarity, order, meaning, structure, rationality: they are necessary to whatever provisional stability we have, and they can be the agents of gradual and successful change.

The successful establishment of a buffer zone around Fort Carson will provide an example for other bases around the country as we seek to protect the training mission of the U.S. military while preserving critical habitats on our ranges.

I'll tell you what I did need to learn was tolerance, and I think I've been actually given a daily opportunity to practice that, and it's - it's - and I know that that sounds almost like a backhanded slap, and it is in a way because I haven't been successful at it every day.

I am always successful in my work.

A good title is the title of a successful book.

When I meet successful people I ask 100 questions as to what they attribute their success to. It is usually the same: persistence, hard work and hiring good people.

I don't know if there is any one secret to successful writing, but one important step is to move beyond imitation and discover what you can write that no one else can - that is, find out who you are and write that in an appropriate narrative and style.

Belief in oneself is one of the most important bricks in building any successful venture.

To judge between good or bad, between successful and unsuccessful would take the eye of a God.

If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and failure memorable.

The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.

I don't think there has been any increase in sophistication in the audience. When people are aware of a concept that's easy to understand, and there's an actor who will attract them to the theater and it's a movie that's funny three-quarters of the time, it will be successful.

The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people.

Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.

And in Iraq we tried to implement the same policy that was so successful in Saudi Arabia, but Saddam Hussein didn't buy. When the economic hit men fail in this scenario, the next step is what we call the jackals.

The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well.

I find that the very things that I get criticized for, which is usually being different and just doing my own thing and just being original, is the very thing that's making me successful.

I think that somebody with the resources and innovation and the idea is going to come out of nowhere and come up with a successful space travel program.

Behind every successful man is a woman, behind her is his wife.

Schools are successful only insofar as they reduce the dependence of a child's opportunities upon his social origins.

I think that I've still not been successful at playing the role of the retired actor, and I'd like to work on that.

There is no person in this room whose basic rights are not involved in any successful defiance to the carrying out of court orders.