“I remember when I first started being in magazines, I had pretty thin skin. I was this nerd that read books and stayed home and didn’t go out.”

You do a movie if it’s good and if you want to do it. It doesn’t matter if it’s small or big or expensive or cheap. If you want to say the words, you’re gonna say them. You can’t strategize.

I’ve learned that it’s OK to be flawed.

I’ve loved making movies. I feel like I’ve been so lucky because I’ve gotten to be in movies that are some of my favorites, regardless of my being in them – like ‘Heathers.’

I’d always find the positive in someone.

You have good days and bad days, and depression’s something that, you know, is always with you.

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.

We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.

I don’t shoot people with Korans. I’d like to, but I don’t.

Other people are talking about writing books about my life, or about some of the things I’ve done. I find it strange, but I also feel it’s my life and my story, and I guess I better be the one to get it on paper the way it actually happened.

Impossible is the word for fools in my dictionary.

Any book worth banning is a book worth reading.

The Bible is a book that has been read more and examined less than any book that ever existed.

Through reading, I escaped the bad parts of my life in the South Bronx. And, through books, I got to travel the world and the universe. It, to me, was a passport out of my childhood and it remains a way – through the power of words – to change the world.

I just downloaded eleven hundred books onto my Kindle, and now I can’t lift it.