“You don’t ask a man, ‘Do you want to be in control [of your job]?’ You assume he wants control. Why would a woman be any different?”

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.

We have a president who stole the presidency through family ties, arrogance and intimidation, employing Republican operatives to exercise the tactics of voter fraud by disenfranchising thousands of blacks, elderly Jews and other minorities.

What I saw day-to-day is like people who are actually asking for freedom, calling for freedom – protesting, singing, chanting, calling for the removal of the regime – plain and simple.

I was a hot-dog stand lady, I was an orphan housemother, I was a waitress 3 or 4 times. All of those jobs did not have good bosses. They basically told you what to do, when to do and when to hop. And I just didn’t like that very much.

I wouldn’t take a directing job if I didn’t think it was enriching life.

In doing one’s work primarily for God, the fear of undue restriction is put, sooner or later, out of the question. He pays me and He pays me well. He pays me and He will not fail to pay me.

And it’s true. It’s so true. All those years of loving Zik because he never asked about Eve… I never realized, I never understood. It was his job as my best friend not to ask. But it was my job as his best friend to tell him without being asked.

To feel valued, to know, even if only once in a while, that you can do a job well is an absolutely marvelous feeling.

A writers job is to destroy and then to build the thing back up again by a chosen means.

Exploring the different avenues and being open to synchronicity and crazy coincidences and little things happening is part of going on your journey to investigate – and the little jewels you might find along the way, my job is to bring those back home and put them on my album.