“Take every job. Learn everybody’s name. Show up early. Know who you are and know who you’re not. Stop dreaming and start trying.”

Lincoln is me. He is America. He is what makes us a great nation and a dangerous nation, all wrapped up in one man.

The live audience is a blind date. The camera is a hungry lover. One wants to be wined and dined and seduced and then decide where the evening will go.

Ask questions. Listen. Be quiet. Be willing to make a fool of yourself. Be willing to be completely exposed and to give all you’ve got and to be rejected for your troubles. But expect magic to happen. It just might. And don’t worry about winning the audition, just win the room.

Lincoln could be on the moon. He’s still Lincoln.

The other knows how it wants to be touched, wants it now and can damn well tell if you are lying about it. Both are fickle. Both feel good. Depends on your mood.

I am pre-disposed to try and show the conflict; the regret; the less-than-perfect choices that any human faces. That’s what I like and it seems to be what the camera likes to see me do.

I want to be Lon Chaney. I want to be Karloff. I want to help people escape the mundane world. I want to make their skins crawl. And I want them to love it every bit as much as I do.

All you have to do to be a camera actor is tell the truth.

The fact that Abraham Lincoln ever, ever became President is either a freak accident of history… or destiny; God’s providence to America.

Abraham Lincoln is resolute, honest, has the best interest of the nation at heart, and he’s as ugly as homemade Sunday sin, so he is modest, too. I’d vote for that in an undead heartbeat.

I got along with people very well at every job I had, people liked me and I liked them and I loved being on my feet.

If you were out of a job and your kid needed diapers and your husband just left you, you would be so confused.

it used to be almost the first question (just after ‘Can you type?’) in the standard female job interview: ‘Are you now, or have you ever, contemplated marriage, motherhood, or the violent overthrow of the U.S. government?

I only began to sing because I couldn’t get a job as an actress.

We wouldn’t have withstood for two years and a half. We would have disintegration of the army, disintegration of the whole institution in the state.

Just do your job. Get in early. Stay late, and don’t complain. Fight the big fights.

Most of us will have more than one job in our working lives, which means we will have more than one opportunity to seek meaningful work at different stages of our own deepening humanity.

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?