“When you end up happily married, even the failed relationships have worked beautifully to get you there.”

Light and funny has a more compelling quality when you’re younger. But I haven’t abandoned the genre: I love falling down; I love Lucille Ball. It’s just that a lot of those stories revolve around problems that I can’t convincingly portray at this age.

I love romantic comedies. I like to watch them and I like to be in them.

I wouldn’t have believed it. I still barely do, truthfully. I’m so continually fortunate that I keep coming across these smart, interesting, creative people who pick me. It’s just stupendous.

You can be true to the character all you want but you’ve got to go home with yourself.

Wit is the key, I think, to anybody’s heart, because who doesn’t like to laugh?

I am very fulfilled in my home life, and what films do for me is to create an ironclad structure that, in my life as a mom, does not exist. It is a shapeless blob of happy chaos.

There are certain people who should know what you look like naked. I just don’t think your high-school algebra teacher should be one of them.

In my life I think I made really solid decisions, and I would stand by them all over again.

Some great friendships can be formed because you see one another at your best and worst.

You have to be smart enough not to dismiss where you came from. It may not be all we are, but it makes up for a great deal.

Part of the reason why some of the relationships I’ve had in my past worked for so long is because when you’re making movies, a huge gap of time can pass when you don’t even see the person.

I think less is more when it comes to kissing in the movies.

I try to call my mother, Betty, with more regularity because I think, What if Hazel didn’t call me for two weeks? I’m able to see her mothering now from a different vantage point.~

How lucky we are that we love each other so much that we burst into three pieces.

It’s funny when people say, ‘I don’t think Julia likes me.’ Honey, if I don’t like you, you’re going to know about it.

In case I forget to tell you later, I had a really good time tonight.

My heart goes out to everyone as we see the end of this year and as we anticipate the new one. We’re in this together.

We have an innate desire to endlessly learn, grow, and develop. We want to become more than what we already are. Once we yield to this inclination for continuous and never-ending improvement, we lead a life of endless accomplishments and satisfaction.

While happiness is an end in itself, it is also the state of mind we can have right now.

Endless money forms the sinews of war.

Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable – and life is more than a dream.

You never change your life until you step out of your comfort zone; change begins at the end of your comfort zone.

Treat people as an end, and never as a means to an end.

They who pass their whole lives in working for their daily bread, have no ideas beyond their business or their interest, and all their understanding seems to lie in their fingers ends.