“I’m sure that I don’t know everything I want to know. I have so much more to learn.”

As a young woman, I wanted nothing more than to see my name in lights.

Sometimes you resent the people you love and need the most. Love is so fascinating in all its forms, and I think everyone who has ever been a mother will relate to this.

Marlon Brando. The finest actor who ever lived. He was my idol when I was 13. He’s done enough work to last two lifetimes. Everything I do, I think: Can Brando play this with me?

I was kind of a wild child. I wasn’t taught the niceties of life.

I want the best product for my audience, and if I don’t care 100%, who will? It’s my name, my likeness that goes out there.

What reaches an audience is honesty. If you’re saying something truthful that’s supposed to be a funny line, it’s going to be funny. And if it’s supposed to be a serious line, it’s going to be serious. But, I don’t think there’s a distinction between how you play drama or comedy, if it’s based in the truth.

I can’t stand to see red in my profit-or-loss column. I’m Taurus the bull, so I react to red. If I see it, I sell my stocks quickly.

Most awards, you know, they don’t give you unless you go and get them – did you know that? Terribly discouraging.

I don’t think I’m tough in a so called tough way. I’m tough on myself.

I think of myself as a girl from Brooklyn.

I started going to acting school when I was 14, and I would always have my own take on things.

It’s not a date. We’re just agreeing to eat at the same table.

I’m a terrible lip-syncer anyway because I have to be in the moment, and I can’t lip-sync to something I recorded three months before.

When I was a teenager in New York, I was buying antique clothes. I still am.

I was a personality before I became a person – I am simple, complex, generous, selfish, unattractive, beautiful, lazy and driven.

How could such a destructive man [referring to Bush] be so popular with the American people?… Not only is he poisoning our air and water – he’s poisoning our political system as well.

When you abide and accept everything completely and fully, you automatically go beyond.

Your desire to withdraw from everything when Allah has involved you in the world of means is a hidden appetite.

The Truth doesn’t answer anything. The Truth IS everything!

Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the facade of pretence. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.

Everything about acting drives me and gives me the need to really try it. It’s an evolution – doing the same thing for 12 years is kind of a chunk.

Look at life all around; everything is growing, everything is moving forward. Therefore I recommend keeping in touch with life and with art.

Something just happens. Everything changes for a reason.

But remember that intent is everything. One does not just jump, one lifts into the air, one rises.