“My mother went to Radcliffe, and rather than just trying to get rich, she wanted to be a teacher and taught for over 30 years in the public schools. She’s definitely got some war stories.”

I grew up in a home environment where I wasn’t getting esteem for anything I did.

No matter what you’re doing, if you’re trying to make a movie, you need to be working with people that are really good and who make you better.

I have a good instinct for what’s real and what’s not. I don’t have to second-guess myself.

The trap for an actor is that you become too successful at what you’re trying to do, and you can find yourself stuck there.

I hate the whole reluctant sex-symbol thing. It’s such bull. You see these dudes greased up, in their underwear, talking about how they don’t want to be a sex symbol.

I’m trying to make people feel welcome and feel valued.

I try new things and give myself permission to fail and experiment because only that way can you get really successful.

I really think that everybody would like to be an actor. Why wouldn’t they? It’s great work if you can get it. The one thing that prevents most people from saying, ‘I’m just gonna go to Hollywood!’ is that it seems unrealistic.

A sale is made on every call you make. Either you sell the client some stock or he sells you a reason he can’t. Either way a sale is made, the only question is: Who is gonna close?

I feel things more deeply anything to do with kids. It just makes a big difference in my life Having a child is like taking the deepest core vulnerable aspect of myself, reaching in and taking it outside of my body.

I don’t go back and look at the monitor between every take; I wait until I feel like we finally got it right: “Let me stop and look at that last one on the monitor.”

There’s something really great and romantic about being poor and sleeping on couches.

You’re basically the sum of all the experiences you’ve ever had, and they’re sort of shaken up in you and reproduced in the things you create, and that includes seeing movies.

How about the more than 1 billion Muslim people in the U.S, who aren’t fanatical, who don’t punch women, who just want to go to school, have some sandwiches, and pray five times a day?

My professional success is really important to me, and my career is really important to me. It’s the most important thing to me outside of my family. I take it very seriously and work really, really hard at it. Family comes first, but this is something that’s really important to me too.

My mother gets all mad at me if I stay in a hotel. I’m 31-years-old, and I don’t want to sleep on a sleeping bag down in the basement. It’s humiliating.

The moon, our mother. The stars, her children.

My mom grew up in the Soviet Bloc, and she was a Tiger Mom. We didn’t get away with much.

My mother was extremely controlled, sort of flawless. And I always tend to be a bit more hippie.

I think my mom threatened to put me up for adoption a few times.

I look and there’s our boy from Vietnam and our daughter from Ethiopia, and our girl was born in Namibia, and our son is from Cambodia, and they’re brothers and sisters, man. They’re brothers and sisters and it’s a sight for elation.

I am a mother because my hearts live outside my body.

The woman is uniformly sacrificed to the wife and mother.

Though motherhood is the most important of all the professions – requiring more knowledge than any other department in human affairs – there was no attention given to preparation for this office.