“It’s really fun to say no sometimes. I just don’t want to discount how fun it is to say no and exercise your right to say no, and – as a girl – it’s important to know how to say no… and that no means no!”

There is a lot you can find out about yourself through knowing about history. I have always been attracted to things that are old. I have just always found such things interesting and compelling.

We all know guys who’ve had their hearts broken in real life; we just don’t usually see it in the movies.

I think making a movie or a record, the best things happen by accident – and those end up being the magic. Every time I’ve followed my gut it’s been better than when I’ve tried to do what I was supposed to do.

I’ve always been really picky about roles and make a point of reminding myself that it’s not about the money – because, obviously, there’s a lot of money to be made in this business if you’re willing to do anything.

I’ve never pursued a role. I always hear stories about actors going after parts and I’m, like, ‘How do they do that?’ It seems so weird. It seems like a total myth or something.

I appreciate a songwriter like Morrissey with so much restraint.

My biggest complaint with tights is that they do not accommodate skinny-ankled people like myself.

I did go through this period where girls would be mean and I had a lot of guy friends. But I’ve found as an adult the importance of having female and male friends.

I was doing about five movies a year for many years. I was just so tired. I walked around feeling like a Mack truck hit me.

That’s one of the most exciting things for me about listening to records: It’s a moment in time, and the less it’s messed with the more powerful it is. I wanted at least one song on the record to be just completely about the moment.

I think my knowledge of music theory is rooted in jazz theory, and a lot of the writers of standards – Rodgers and Hart, and Gershwin.

I’ve always been a late bloomer with a lot of things, just in general, so I think this was something that needed to come to fruition in this particular way.

I don’t like to plan harmonies too much, because there’s something fun that happens when you just sing a pass, then sing another pass, and layer them on top of each other.

California is a great big nation of one They never knew what they wanted ’til it was already gone

It’s very much a piece of myself when I write a song. I don’t mean to say it’s very personal, like the lyrics mean something personal to me. When I write a song, that’s my taste in music – my taste in chord progressions and melodies.

I feel like making music because – and this has much to do with the way I was able to make this record – there’s more of myself in it.

You mean that people who continue virtuous in an old-fashioned way must inevitably suffer in times like these?

Culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world.

If one were searching for the best means to efface and kill in a whole nation the discipline of self-respect, the feeling for what is elevated, he could do no better than take the American newspapers.

Ancestors do not mean so much. The rebel who succeeds generally makes it easier for the posterity that follows him; so these descendants are usually contented and smug and soft. Rebels are made from life, not ancestors.

The meanest thing in the world is the devil.

Meanness is more in half-doing than in omitting acts of generosity.

Where envy reigns virtue can’t exist, and generosity doesn’t go with meanness.

You shall love peace as a means to new wars – and the short peace more than the long.