It's hard to notice things without people noticing me and that takes some getting used to.

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

You know you've found love when they have: a smile that melts you, an innocence that soothes, a presences that glows and a trust in them that grows. - For Lydia

Trying to explain or define grace is like catching the wind in a cardboard box or describing the color green.

Whatever you would make habitual, practice it; and if you would not make a thing habitual, do not practice it, but accustom yourself to something else.

The severity of penalties is only a vain resource, invented by little minds in order to substitute terror for that respect which they have no means of obtaining.

Time is 'to make'. it is not 'to have'.

In New York in 1915 I bought at a hardware store a snow shovel on which I wrote in advance of the broken arm .

Men must fumble awhile with error to separate it from truth, I think- as long as they don't seize the error hungrily because it has a pleasanter taste.

Always remember that your present situation is not your final destination. The best is yet to come.

The hardening of the attitudes is the most deadly disease on the face of the earth.