“I was very depressed after breaking off my engagement with Johnny ten years ago. I was embarrassingly dramatic at the time, but you have to remember I was only 19 years old.”

As an actress, you want to try new things. You don’t want to repeat yourself. That becomes more important to you, as you get older.

I try to just pay attention to what I’m feeling. If something is scary to me, then that’s sometimes a good sign – although, sometimes it’s not.

I don’t use the Internet, but apparently you can find out everything on it.

For a long time, I was almost ashamed of being an actress. I felt like it was a shallow occupation. People would be watching my every move.

I feel my best when I’m happy.

I often get offered things that are so similar to things that I have done, and life is too short. When you make a film or a show, as you get older, that’s a lot of time to be doing something that you’re not absolutely invested in or in love with.

One thing you have to have when you act is energy.

In America, I don’t know how much longer the environment is going to exist. I sort of strongly believe that we’re in danger.

I’m not a drug user myself. I’m too little to take drugs – my body can’t take it.

The older you get, the more yourself you can be and the less worried you are about what other people think.

Scapegoating will go on forever. We need someone to blame – illegal immigrants, single moms, people in prison. We need someone to victimize.

I think it’s really important to have a life and have interests outside of this [movie] business, and not rely on this business to validate you as a human being. If you do that, you’re really in a dangerous spot.

I remember the whole thing with the word ambition. I was messed up for a while because I associated it with certain people who just want to be famous. I think, for a while, it was kind of a dirty word for women.

People think that they just want movies like Pretty Woman, when really they – at least the ones that I know personally – have been waiting for something that doesn’t completely insult them.

Break-ups are hard for anybody, but it’s particularly tough when it’s being documented and you see the person’s picture everywhere. Most people don’t have that added problem when they break up with someone.

I have this sense that I didn’t really start growing up until my twenties.

Now that I’m an adult, I realize that kids know at a very young age when they’re being devalued, when adults aren’t invested enough to help them learn. Their anger over it can manifest itself as unruliness. It’s hardly their fault. They aren’t bad kids. They’re just trying to survive bad circumstances.

Youth is not an age thing. It’s a quality. Once you’ve had it, you never lose it.

I think it’s important to set up that boundary of respect for your kids at a young age, so they will know, I better listen to Mommy.

A man is a fool if he drinks before he reaches the age of 50, and a fool if he doesn’t afterward.

Man’s first law is to watch over his own preservation; his first care he owes to himself; and as soon as he reaches the age of reason, he becomes the only judge of the best means to preserve himself; he becomes his own master.

The most impressive thing about this improvement in performance was that it did not come from a major process change or an advance in technology. Instead, it came through a leadership principle that has been around for ages: Simple.

What is an adult? A child blown up by age.

America is therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s History shall reveal itself.