“I want to say to you that there is life and dreams and surprises after 30-and 40, and 50, and 60, and 77! Believe me, life is one long surprise.”

What I think we need to do is infuse everyday and every action with the kind of values we hope will be in the future, with kindness, with nurturing, with dreams, ambition, using your talents, not resorting to violence, other forms of conflict resolution, with humor, with poetry, with music.

Women have two choices: Either she’s a feminist or a masochist.

The purpose of feminism is to free the uniqueness of the individual and to understand that inside each of us is a unique human being who is a combination of heredity and environment.

Life after 50 or 60 is itself another country, as different as adolescence is from childhood, or as adulthood is from adolescence – and just as adventurous.

If you really want to be lonely, get married.

But somewhere within each of us, buried at varying depths depending on the age and degree of neglect or abuse, shame or coercion we endured, there is a resistant, daydreaming, rebellious, creative, unique child — a true self who is waiting.

Empathy is the most radical of human emotions.

Helping begins with listening.

The origins of violence against women by men are not biological. If that were the case, it would exist in every culture. And it doesn’t exist in every culture.

So whatever you want to do, just do it… Making a damn fool of yourself is absolutely essential.

Women tend to be conservative in youth and get more radical as they get older because they lose power with age. So, if a young woman is not a feminist, I say, just wait.

Law and justice are not always the same. When they aren’t, destroying the law may be the first step toward changing it.

There is a naive belief that injustice only had to be pointed out in order to be cured.

Clinging to the past is the problem. Embracing change is the answer.

Behave like everything you do matters.

What would happen if even one generation were raised with respect and without violence?

There was a certain moment. I was about 61 – two, three or four, and I got a script. And I sent it back to the producer saying – “I don’t wanna do it. The part’s too small.” And he sent it back to me, he said, “You shouldn’t read the lover. You should read the father.

With age, you get to a place where you don’t want to knock people out. You just want to give people a hug.

Age is nothing but experience, and some of us are more experienced than others

When those waiters ask me if I want some fresh ground pepper, I ask if they have any aged pepper.

At 25, you’ve got millions of brain cells to kill.

I felt a tremendous sadness for men who can’t deal with a woman of their own age.

Everybody, no matter how old you are, is around 24, 25 in their heart.

I think we live in an age of increasing mediocrity.