My memory of my mom is a wine glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She was a runway fashion model, and she was quite a glamorous woman.

I have an education degree from the University of Minnesota, and I was a teacher for about a minute.

My grandmother was a teacher, my sister was a teacher, my daughter was a teacher and is now a superintendent in northern California, and my son-in-law is a high school principal. I am surrounded.

Your lungs are changed forever from your first cigarette.

I started acting when I was 10, doing musical theater. I was a brunette at that time. I was always cast in all the exotic parts.

I'd had my daughter when I was a teenager - I took my daughter to college with me.

My daughter teases me once in a while saying, Remember when you used to be my mother and you had black hair?

I've always been very involved in anything that had to do with lung disease or cancer.

My sister and I are both diagnosed with second-hand smoke syndromes. We have never smoked, but we grew up with second-hand smoke our entire lives.

Impotence is one of the major hazards of cigarette smoking.

My dad had emphysema and both of my parents had chronic bronchitis and ended up with cancers - all smoking related.

People are funny. They want the front of the bus, the middle of the road and the back of the church. —Mrs. Miracle

Paradox of marriage: you can never know someone entirely

People tend to look at dating sort of like a safari - like they're trying to land the trophy.

So it's hard to be an artist and be true to the reality of the world you want to create and also make it entertaining and successful financially.

The movie industry places such importance on first-week numbers-which means what to people, I don't know. It's very strange. They hope to sell tons of records the first week, and then what?

[Ronald Reagan] called the image of [George] Washington praying on his knees in Valley Forge "the most sublime image in American history."

In war, discipline is superior to strength; but if that discipline is neglected there is no longer any difference between the soldier and the peasant.

You just have to pay attention to what people need and what has not been done.

You are a writer when you tell yourself you are. No one else's opinion matters. Screw them. You are when you say you are.

The plough is to the farmer what the wand is to the sorcerer. Its effect is really like sorcery.