I think of myself more as a character actor than that ingenue leading lady, who started out something like Michelle Pfeiffer, or Jessica Lange. I'm a bit quirkier than that.

I think ties are great and Kathy Bates is an actress whose work I've admired tremendously over many years, and I feel a certain kinship with her, we both came from an extensive theater background.

Acting gave me the opportunity to do outrageous things. It allowed me to be sad, happy, angry and lustful, even if it was just vicariously.

I certainly do get at the end of my rope at times. We all do.

I was always much more shy. All I knew was that I loved to act. But I don't know about the other part of it. I'm not sure I had the chutzpah to go and prove yourself.

I was a very good girl for a long time, that's what really drew me to acting. The stage was the perfect place to be outrageous, to be sad, to be angry, to be all these different things.

It's such a great feeling to make people laugh. I know I've made people cry or want to slit their wrists, but to make people laugh is a very intoxicating, wonderful thing.

I'm hard to pin down. I tend to look different in films.

I don't have a political bone in my body.

Once I got to high school and auditioned for a play and got in, I thought this was really what I was looking for. Once that had got cleared up, from 13 on, that was it.

I think the people who cast films tend to think of me in regard to strong women with integrity and a lot of it has been very good.

When you know your life mission and life goal, you will be better able to avoid the life traps

Circumstances cause us to act the way we do. We should always bear this in mind before judging the actions of others. I realized this from the start during World War II.

A child is beset with long traditions. And his infancy is so old, so old, that the mere adding of years in the life to follow will not seem to throw it further back -- it is already so far.

Openness, as currently conceived, is a way of making surrender to whatever is most powerful, or worship of vulgar success, look principled.

What kind of people are these with such low self-esteem that they need a war to feel better about themselves?

I am who I am and I don't think you can put a label on it.

If I've been accused a number of times of writing plays where the endings are ambivalent, indeed, that's the way I find life.

The path of social advancement is, and must be, strewn with broken friendships.

She has more goodness in her little finger than he has in his whole body.

The histories of mankind are histories only of the higher classes.