Gabriel Byrne is an extraordinary human being. We have two extraordinary kids and we work at it. We were always friends. He stuck by me through very hard times, and I hope he'd say the same about me.

There is a certain androgyny to my appeal.

Acting is a matter of giving away secrets.

I eat cheese and salami and a lot of fried chicken. I eat a big bag of oatmeal-raisin cookies every night and I don't gain weight. I still look OK as long as I'm dressed.

Men who love their mothers treat women wonderfully. And they have enormous respect for women.

I studied acting for 10 years before I went for an audition. I studied with Lee Strasberg and Actors Studio teachers, and went to the High School of Performing Arts.

No more bare bodies in film scenes for me. For my children's sake, I must stop. The other kids at school keep throwing it up to my children, and they are not kind.

When I played Leonardo DiCaprio's mother, they liked that Leo had very hooded eyes and a rounded nose with a ball. They said, They look like they could be mother and son.

My first movie was 'Diner.' My second movie was 'Tender Mercies.' I did really good work.

The more powerful you become, some people especially don't like it that you're a woman. I stick up for myself.

My nickname was Skinabo - skin and bones.

The hardest thing of all is when pain is hidden behind a mask of calm.

If a man marries his housekeeper or his cook, the national dividend is diminished.

I miss him still today: his long, whiskery eyebrows, his huge hands and hugs, his warmth, his prayers, his stories, but above all his shining example of how to live and how to die.

Why doesn't God just force us to do the things he knows to be right? It is because that would lose precisely that which he has intended in our creation: freely chosen character.

When law and duty are one, united by religion, you never become fully conscious, fully aware of yourself. You are always a little less than an individual.

It is a new road to happiness, if you have strength enough to castigate a little the various impulses that sway you in turn.

Suffering perfects the soul.

Real people are places to me as much as persons: I want to see them, as I want to see the places I am fond of, in all weathers and at all times of the year.

Farming is not just for growing crops, it is for the cultivation...o f human beings!

My wish is to construct a system of sociology on the model of celestial mechanics, physics, and chemistry.