I'm sorry I didn't wear paint this morning. I tend not to wear it unless I'm getting highly paid.

A critic is someone who never actually goes to the battle, yet who afterwards comes out shooting the wounded.

Love is as strict as acting. If you want to love somebody, stand there and do it. If you don't, don't. There are no other choices.

I'm interested in playing old ladies because I am becoming one. And I want to become a very good one!

I'm sorry I didn't wear paint this morning. I tend not to wear it unless I'm getting highly paid.

You know, my hair is very upsetting to people, but it's upsetting on purpose. It is important to look old so that the young will not be afraid of dying. People don't like old women. We don't honor age in our society, and we certainly don't honor it in Hollywood.

Both my parents were actors. I was schooled to think that acting was an important social service, that it was something that human beings need.

I am a greedy actor in the sense that I like the big bites. Put a big fat steak in front of me, and I will eat it.

I am pretty sure that all young human beings have, at one time or another in their growing-up, been actors. They have used their imaginations to carry them away from painful or confusing situations... have imagined themselves to be more powerful or beautiful or brave or loving than they are.

I don't have a waist: I'm a breadbox on top of legs.

I don't take part in texting and those other things myself, so I don't really know if people put as much thought into messaging as they used to into writing letters.

I never played the 'decoration,' I always played the one who suffered. And then I got very lucky in my middle career, when I started playing the hero, which at that point was quite rare for women.

I think mothers get a raw deal in American culture, so I've been defending them. I have three daughters, and I know that as they become mothers, they got a lot more gentle towards me!

I think the 20s are a vastly overrated decade. We promise kids that once they get out of school, life will begin and their dreams will come true. But then comes the struggle.

I was raised to be in service to something larger than myself. A lot of actors concentrate on what they will get out of the profession, rather than what they can offer it. The way I see it, if you come with something to offer, you can offer it forever.

I went into the family business. To me, it was the norm and not the exception.

I wish it was possible to do the work and not have to talk about it, but it is traditional in the theater to go into the village square and bang the drum and say, 'Come see this show, come see this show.'

I'm not glamorous, I don't have a look, I don't know anything about opera, I have no Italian, and I'm too old.

My job always is to play a person, not to judge her.

My time on television began, and I started playing victims. I did about 10 or 12 years of them, which gets boring, right?

Sweat makes good friendship cement.

The director's job is full of all sorts of annoyances and details - like how many cars are on the street. Ugh. I don't want it. I like my gig. And I feel that for the next 30 years or so I can keep learning more about it.

The first time I was nominated for an award for professional acting, I was in my mid-twenties. I was married and the mother of my first two daughters. I had been working for near to 15 years.

There was this wonderful trick of going to the theater with my parents and sitting in the audience under the watchful eye of an usher, and then these other people would come on the stage: They spoke differently and had different clothes and hair. Afterward, they would come back, and they were my parents again. It was magic.

What I like is the acting itself. But I'm a lousy celebrity. I'm not interested in selling my private life. I take my private feelings to the work, but I want there to be a difference between me and whoever it is I'm playing.

When I got married, my marriage was illegal in 17 states because my husband had a different skin color than I did. And we saw those laws go down one at a time.

Women are usually only interesting to studio executives when they are fecund, between the ages of 15 and 30. I decided to get through the really tough patch, around 50, by just cutting my price and playing ten years older. I didn't want to have to wait until I was an old lady to play one.

People perceive opera and classical as elitist - I disagree. I've always tried to mix the two, make it more accessible.

I'm embracing what I have. I'm a curvier bombshell with big boobs. I'm not high-fashion. I don't do runway. You won't see me at Fashion Week.

Yoga's hard for me, but I know you can really feel the difference when you do it consistently. I'd rather be playing basketball.

The return from cows and sheep in cheese is worth much money every day in the season, without calves and lambs, and without the manure, which all return corn and fruit.

As you study computer science you develop this wonderful mental acumen particularly with relational databases systems analysis and artificial intelligence.

Information and inspiration are everywhere... history, art, architecture, everything an illustrator needs. Europe is, after all, the land that has generated most of the enduring myths and legends of Western culture.

I think one probably absorbs things like a sponge and things emerge without your always being aware of it.

I like what's obscure.

I give all the glory to God. It's kind of a win-win situation. The glory goes up to Him and the blessings fall down on me.

I am really addicted to music.

The mind of the beginner is empty, free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and open to all the possibilities.

I never had a problem with genre because a genre actually is like a uniform - you put yourself into a certain uniform. But if you dress up in a police officer's uniform, it doesn't mean that you are an officer; it can mean something else.

No human being past the thoughtless age of boyhood will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does.

That's painful always to lose.

I was a good student with mathematical ability and interests. As such, I took the usual college preparatory program in high school for one looking to become an engineer: all the available courses in mathematics and science.

There has to be space for play in literature. We all need some breathing room.

I'd rather not get into what I'm talking about lyrically. I think it's impossible not to demystify a song when saying what it's about. Music and art can be damaged severely by too much information; I say that as somebody that has participated in that.

We can't equate democracy with Christianity because the largest democracy on earth is India, which is primarily Hindu. The third largest democracy is Indonesia, which is Islamic. Democracy and freedom are not dependent on Christian beliefs.

When I feel a little confused, the only thing to do is to turn back to the study of nature before launching once again into the subjects closest to heart.

For us, someone who is willing to step forward and help is much more courageous than someone who is merely fulfilling the role.

Meditation is wondering. It is both wondering and wonder.

I love being a single mom. But it's definitely different when you're dating.