“At an age when most actresses are being phased out, I am being phased in - with a vengeance.”

“Beauty set up distance between other people and me. It warped their behavior.”

“But it was hard to leave because the show's been so important in our lives.”

“Dreams are, by definition, cursed with short life spans.”

“Glamorized... am I glamorous?”

“Hollywood is like Picasso's bathroom.”

“I admit that Post-it note sheets that adhere to virtually any surface are now my substitute of choice for retention.”

“I believe a lot in monogamy, let me tell you.”

“I certainly love doing comedy and feel most comfortable near it.”

“I couldn't hold it together today. George Clooney asked me if I was OK, and I practically collapsed. I couldn't stop crying, I had to go off sobbing like an idiot.”

“I didn't have a financial need, and I wasn't very gifted at relationships. I probably was more like what we think of boys as being: hard to pin down and wary of commitment.”

“I guess I was a mom so late in life, my daughter was the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

“I have never appreciated a quiet moment with a friend as much, a quiet moment with a book and I think part of that is my obsession with being older and time going faster and it's become increasingly sweeter for me.”

“I have never savored life with such gusto as I do now.”

“I never have really said much about the whole episode, which was endless. But his speech was a perfectly intelligent speech about fathers not being dispensable and nobody agreed with that more than I did.”

“I remember being in tears at the hospital after Chloe was born, at the thought that someday she would have to leave home.”

“I was getting offers. I had just turned them down. Then I realized I should be grateful that at age 54, people were still offering me film roles.”

“I've never felt more comfortable in my skin, I've never enjoyed life as much and I feel so lucky.”

“Memory is the first casualty of middle age, if I remember correctly.”

“Men say they love independence in a woman, but they don't waste a second demolishing it brick by brick.”

“Not that we didn't have close relationships with our parents - I'm very close to my mom - but parents didn't think anything of going off for a few weeks and leaving their kids.”

“People see you as an object, not as a person, and they project a set of expectations onto you. People who don't have it think beauty is a blessing, but actually it sets you apart.”

“Self-acceptance has been a blessed by-product of middle age.”

“Though beauty gives you a weird sense of entitlement, it's rather frightening and threatening to have others ascribe such importance to something you know you're just renting for a while.”

“Were women meant to do everything - work and have babies?”

“When are you going to realize that if it doesn't apply to me it doesn't matter?”