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

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 have never written a play, a story, a poem, or my one film - anything - unless something was troubling me enough, wrecking me, in fact, to drive me back into the absurdity of writing. I do not enjoy writing.

I'd never managed anyone before, so I don't have a lot of experience. But I'm lucky - I have a lot of team members who have a really honest relationship with me.

I do believe in self-help.

I owe my mother who I am, and my father my drive.

If someone is trying to skip the struggle - which is the creative job - our machines today, the technology that we have, can help the person, but it is only momentary. On the other hand, if you are creative, you have the skill, and you are hardworking, technology can only make you superior.

Tiger had the advantage of high school, college, and a father who knew golf. I was self-taught. Blacks really won't play golf in great numbers until some of these basketball and football stars buy some golf courses where blacks can play.

I had discovered that I'm much less special than I thought I am. So whatever I find true for myself, other people might also relate to.

I think the clothes in Belle de Jour are very important to the style of the film. Even today, it is still timeless.

In all of living, have much fun and laughter. Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured.

During your career, you put yourself in peak physical condition, but then you bear the brunt of it for the rest of your life.

Well, maybe it's because of the rumors they had going around, you know, they had some rumors about Dennis Brown was in the hospital and all that. Well, that is all bull!

My job as a prosecutor is to do justice. And justice is served when a guilty man is convicted and an innocent man is not.

Any attempt to list the ten best science fiction novels is doomed to failure.

A positive attitude can destroy every negative obstacle.

I didn't finish my dress until about three days before my wedding - I had the flu and was stitching it from my bed. And the tulle came back from India all brown. We had to wash it for hours, but that didn't dissuade me from wearing it.

I thought if I went somewhere where I didn't know anybody and they didn't know me I could start all over again.

I suppose directing on set is the most fun because it's a good crack and you feel you're on the battlefield whereas writing is a fairly solitary undertaking.

I am not afraid of the pen, or the scaffold, or the sword. I will tell the truth wherever I please.

People in distress behave in a stressful way. They aren't all sweetness and light. They don't behave well when they are unhappy. That's just what I've observed.

I guess from 12 onwards I was always into my music.

Is there some risk every day we walk out our front door? Every time we get in our car? Yeah. Are we materially less safe now than we were 10 years ago? Whatever delta there is, it's very small.

America's Facebook generation shows a submission to standardization that I haven't seen before. The American adventure has always been about people forgetting their former selves - Samuel Clemens became Mark Twain, Jack Kerouac went on the road. If they had a Facebook page, they wouldn't have been able to forget their former selves.