“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.”

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’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.

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!

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.

I believe every translation is a process in which something is lost in the original precisely so that something is gained in the new text.

The age of credulity is every age the world has ever known. Men have always turned from the ascertained, which is limited and discouraging, to the dubious, which is unlimited and full of hope for everybody.

The happiness of every living thing is what we want.

We have the most varied and imaginative bathrooms in the world, we have kitchens with the most gimmicks, we have houses with every possible electrical gadget to save ourselves all kinds of trouble – all so that we can have leisure. Leisure, leisure, leisure!

Emily Dickinson provided four or more alternates for every word; Beethoven wrestled with endings to the point of exhaustion; in our day Jerome Robbins and his lack of decision are a byword in the dance profession.

The creation according to Islam is not a unique act in a given time but a perpetual and constant event; and God supports and sustains all existence at every moment by His will and His thought.

Every day has been so short, every hour so fleeting, every minute so filled with the life I love that time for me has fled on too swift a wing.

False history gets made all day, any day, the truth of the new is never on the news False history gets written every day … the lesbian archaeologist watches herself sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing, asking the clay all questions but her own.