I actually washed my window once, and it fell through - it was being held together by the dirt.

Obviously, it wasn't meant for me to die of cancer at 40. Every day my life surprises me, just like my cancer diagnosis surprised me. But you roll with it. That's our job as humans.

The common misconception is that as an actress you have to learn what you're doing. No, you just have to make the audience think you've learned it.

I'm an old-school, embarrassing Joni Mitchell fan. Her music made a hook in my soul and hasn't let go for all these years. I even sing her songs as lullabies to my kids.

I don't have examples in my life of people who are all good or bad; I have deeply loved many people who are both, and I relate to those kinds of people on a far greater level.

But I've always been hard to cast, I've never been an ingenue, I've never been the romantic lead. I'm an actor; give me the script and I do what I do and hope it's good.

I was a young kid from Long Island who wanted to do something large with her life, so I can relate to that.

I've never been all that interested or aware of what people are thinking about me or saying about me. I think that has kept me safest and sanest.

One of the ways I think I gain fodder for characters is by watching people.

I sort of love reading the scripts and going, 'Oh wow, what a great idea. I never would have thought of that.

All I ever wanted to do was act. And pay my bills

Working a 40 hour work week is a very shallow and unfulfilling experience for many people.

Just as a cooling pot gives off heat, so all through youth and adolescence we give off calories of virtue. That's what's called ingenuousness.

Ethics is a skill

To deprive the derelicts of hope is right, and to sustain them in their illusory "pipe dreams" is right also.

Sometimes, you have to go Insane, to Outsane, the Sane. You know what i'm Sanin?

In every one of the Greeks' mythology tales, there is this: a man chasing a woman, or a woman chasing a man. There is never a meeting in the middle.

Randomness I love. And I still love just a holler right in the middle of an ongoing narrative. Pain or joy, ecstasy.

I jump 'em from other writers but I arrange 'em my own way.

If you get lost, you can always be found.

Virginia Woolf was one example. She was called the "Lover of 100 Gangsters."