“While I was growing up, I believed I could do anything I could think of. So the challenge was always to keep thinking – to get to where I wanted to be and then to think of somewhere else to go.”

When I turned 50, I threw myself a big birthday party, and I looked seriously at what my life has been about. I recommend this to everybody. Ask yourself, “What have I done? How did I do it? Where’d I mess up?

Marriage is such hard work. And it’s full of rage and real human drama.

Enough about me. What do you think about me?

Some say love, it is a razor that leaves your soul to bleed.

I haven’t left my house in days. I watch the news channels incessantly. All the news stories are about the election; all the commercials are Viagra and Cialis. Election, erection, election, erection! Either way we’re screwed!

I bear no grudges. I have a mind that retains nothing.

I’m confident that I’m as intelligent as many people, but I know that I’m not as intelligent as some. So in the presence of hyperintelligent people, I’m a shrinking violet because I don’t want to look like a fool. I know a little about a lot and a lot about a little.

Through books and photographs, I saw a world that was not my own – and I realized that there was another world.

Lay a foundation – get my foot in the door, and then undoubtedly, of course, I would be offered great roles as soon as I grew up enough to handle them.

When the movies first started, audiences were dumbstruck to see actresses walking around in evening gowns. They’d never seen anything like that. They wanted to be like those actors and actresses, so the movies informed their behavior.

I have a ball – and it keeps my heart rate up. I get to wear fabulous clothes. I get to make people laugh. That’s my core business, and that’s where I’ll always return.

When I read that, I burst into tears. It was so generous and so basic. Not fluffy. I can’t understand why we scrimp on education and shortchange our kids. Why would the citizenry do that to the people who are going to inherit its republic?

hen you’re in your third adulthood, the one that leads to the grave, and you ask yourself, “What will I do between now and then?” Instead of thinking in terms of glamour, you start thinking in terms of reform – your contribution to the world.

I’m not interested in perfection. The universe is perfect, and there are some works of art that we see as perfect, but human beings aren’t perfect.

Image is everything, and the voice or the idea or the song is hardly anything at all. Half the time the person isn’t even doing the singing. I’m a bit cynical about this [music] business.

I never know how much of what I say is true.

I feel the same way about all my friends. To me, the exact relationship between me and someone else doesn’t matter much. But people want to label everything… So I guess I seem indifferent in that way.

Ordinary people should have the same ability to understand art as anybody else. I don’t think art is elite or mysterious. I don’t think anybody can separate art from politics.

If artists cannot speak up for human dignity or rights, then who else will do it?

The loneliness caused by not hearing Ren’s voice… I felt it deep in the night. I felt it deeper than anyone else. Even now at times I look back.

When all else fails, read the instructions.

We experience boredom, which is nothing elses than the feeling of unease that take hold of us when our spirit is not absorbed by the mirages of life.

Don’t ever give up. Believe in yourself or no one else will.

The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.