“1977 is the year I made my first movie. Shortly after, I was offered quite nice roles in television. The general consensus among everyone was that I'd be out of my mind to do that.”

“Acting was far from my world. I rarely saw a play. I never met a real actress; they seemed unreal.”

“Anything to do with the South resonates with me, because I'm Southern.”

“Anytime I had a date, it was at the Sadie Hawkins Day dance.”

“As an actor, you're always looking for, what do I get to do? It's not just what do I say, but what do I do, too.”

“At one point, I kind of looked in the mirror and said, 'You know, you're a mom. You're a wife. People count on you; you can't go off the deep end into this kind of crazy musical swirl.'”

“Christopher Lloyd was actually the first person - or certainly one of the first few - who ever spoke to me on film.”

“Do I feel like I still need to prove myself? Absolutely. And I want to feel that way, and I like that.”

“Essential oils are extremely important to me.”

“Every child in America fantasizes about running wild in the White House for a few minutes.”

“For me, acting has often been solitary. You're all together, and then boom, you're gone.”

“Hey, it's a miracle to have a career in Hollywood. But it doesn't begin to sum me up.”

“I actually believed if I behaved myself and if I made straight A's and if I was good enough, I could save my dad's life. And every single time he had a heart attack, I knew what I had done that caused it.”

“I am lucky enough not to have to take jobs unless I love the material.”

“I decided if you're lucky enough to be alive, you should use each birthday to celebrate what your life is about.”

“I did 'Philadelphia' and 'What's Eating Gilbert Grape?' at the same time. It's kind of wonderful to do it that way, because you get very hyper-focused.”

“I did sing in a choir for a while, but if anybody was sick, I always whispered my songs to make sure nobody could pick out my voice.”

“I didn't work for a year and a half after 'Melvin and Howard' because all I was being offered was silly parts.”

“I don't consider myself much of a singer. I'm a writer first.”

“I don't know how I could plan my career.”

“I don't know if I've ever read a movie that's as strange and unpredictable and hilarious and wonderful as the stuff we're doing on 'The Last Man on Earth.' It's jaw-dropping every week when I get a script, because it goes to such strange places.”

“I don't want to go to just watch big huge summer movies that everybody predicts is going to be the big huge summer movie and that are all the sort of blow-them-up movies or whatever you want to call them. I think there are a lot of other people out there, too, that want an alternative.”

“I don't worry when I go away for a while. I think there is a place for me. It may not be at the top of the heap. But that doesn't bother me, either. I think I will always be able to get work - which is the only thing I have ever really been interested in.”

“I feel like I'm attracted to characters who have one foot firmly planted on the ground. And their heads up in the clouds somewhere. Practical dreamers. They try to impress you that they've got this whole thing figured out, but there's more going on inside their heads than you might imagine.”

“I got my SAG card on my first movie, 'Goin' South,' with Jack Nicholson in 1978.”

“I grew up believing in Santa Claus, and we still treat our house at Christmas with a huge reverence for that belief - even though our children are 19 through 23.”

“I had two wonderful teachers: Sanford Melsner and Fred Kareman.”

“I have hundreds of songs.”

“I have never been able to sing in the shower, much less in front of anybody.”

“I have never had any success in planning my life, really.”

“I helped found Artists for New South Africa, but it used to be called Artists for Free South Africa. Alfre Woodard and a bunch of us started this.”

“I know that's why I became an actress. In my dream world, I could get mad and scream and yell, and if somebody died, they got up again. In real life, I didn't dare try it.”

“I know this is kind of corny, but we thought about renewing our vows again because I think my mom would really love it if we did that in Arkansas, where I came from.”

“I learned not to care what other people think.”

“I learned so much about life and other human beings - then about myself.”

“I like being part of a team.”

“I love to paint. And I have another profession - an interior design business.”

“I love to play horrible, evil, mean people.”

“I loved Westerns for different reasons as an adult. It is not only our only native brand of storytelling - the only one that's not influenced by Europeans and not something that's done better by the French - but I also love the sensuality of the Western. The sights, sounds, and smell of a Western are very exciting.”

“I panic at parties. I don't like talking absolutely nothing and pretending, so I'm quite odd socially.”

“I remember when I was growing up and watching southern people depicted on television, I thought, 'Well, based on what I'm seeing, I guess I'm supposed to be stupid and racist.' It's still, sadly, the easy route for a writer to go.”

“I started in improv and went into different kinds of things.”

“I studied with Sandy Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse. I was in the last class to study with him before he had his larynx removed, so I actually remember the sound of his voice. He was an incredible teacher.”

“I take the fact that films cost a lot of money very seriously, but once in a while to have somebody say, This is a big scene, take your time with it, is important. That's John Sayles.”

“I think, as an actor, you're constantly confronted with your fear of sticking your neck out.”

“I think that we need to look hard at our beliefs and be responsible about how we speak out.”

“I think the secret to what Jim Henson did, ultimately, is that he understood how to cut through to the... I know this sounds corny... but the child inside of you.”

“I want women, especially young women, to create a world where your success is not based on being young.”

“I wanted a relationship like the one my mother and father had. It wasn't perfect; they had to work on it. But there was an unbelievable mutual respect.”

“I was a waitress for six years in New York. I actually got fascinated to see how fast and how good a waitress I could be. I was doing it, so I tried to do it as well as I could.”

“I was excited to turn 60.”

“I was this person with this weird last name from New York that no one had ever heard of. But my screen test I guess, according to him, was the best. So I got the part, which was incredible.”

“I wasn't making any money, but I didn't feel unsuccessful because of that. You can do that in New York but not in Hollywood. In Hollywood, it is how much money you make.”

“I wish sometimes people wouldn't underestimate me. But it's a fleeting wish. It's not where I live.”

“I would like to think that in America, as time goes on, you gain freedom, not lose freedom.”

“I would say that the things that have really left a mark on me have more to do with my family and my children's lives rather than a film role.”

“I write music as a staff writer for Universal Music Group, and I have since 2007. I've never talked about it publicly because I wanted to earn the right to be in the same room as the great writers I write with and not shoot my mouth off because I'm an actor. It's really important to me, and I really care about it.”

“I'd already made the decision before I'd even read it-just because it was John Sayles. Then when I read it, the themes were actually themes that have been a big part of my life.”

“If there's an addiction in the Clinton family, it's to problem solving.”

“If you want to grow up and do what I do for a living - be an actress - my advice to you is read as much as you can.”

“If you're not growing, you're dying, and I'm not ready for that.”

“I'm a chameleon when it comes to languages.”

“I'm a very musical person.”

“I'm kind of a laugh junkie. It's what I appreciate in life, because life is rich and sometimes it's hard, and I really, really love to laugh and gravitate towards people who make me laugh.”

“I'm not saying it's easy, and it's definitely harder for women. Because there is definitely a double standard about gorgeous older men, and it's different for older women.”

“I'm real strong, and I'm also real feminine, and I don't find a struggle having those two things under one roof.”

“In my business, guys may age, but it's not even a question they're valued. But women my age are supposed to disappear.”

“It was a few days later I came out to Hollywood for a screen test, and so did a lot of other people. So, I really didn't think I would get it. I was definitely the one that was least likely to get it, because everyone else was an already established star.”

“It's usually, my people speak to your people and then they speak around each other and trade calls for weeks.”

“It's very easy to approach a character like that - a so-called strong woman who overcomes the odds - and give a one-note performance, playing that strength alone. Strength is only one thing a person has.”

“I've chosen all my films very carefully. I know that I've had better parts in some films than in others. But the films I do are the ones I want to see when I read the screenplays. I guess you can basically say that I've just done things I loved when I read them.”

“I've found that most people who studied when they were little, even if they never took another tap class, it's percussive, so it stays in your body, the muscle memory of it.”

“I've had a great time doing it - being able to say yes to a couple of amazing shows.”

“I've had battles with writers who live in L.A. and were writing southern characters, because they felt like if they wrote 'Sugar' and 'Honey' at the end of every sentence, that would make it southern.”

“'Justified' had such dead-on beautiful scripts that you didn't want to mess with it.”

“Let me put it this way. There is more to acting than just acting like somebody. I like to act in such a way that other people get some notion of what it's like to be somebody.”

“Life is about surviving loss.”

“My agents and managers deserve a special Emmy award for scheduling.”

“My heritage, many generations back, is Dutch and it was fun to go where nobody asked me how to pronounce my name.”

“My mother was a gorgeous person with no vanity, but she was a really good soul.”

“New York had this wild beat that anybody could dance to. It was very nurturing to young people.”

“'Step Brothers' is probably the film the most people who approach me want to talk about.”

“That's my name. I know it's difficult, and it's not pretty, but it's my name.”

“The sights and sounds and smells, the whole genre of Westerns - I love them.”

“There are no worse cliches than southern cliches. They make my skin crawl.”

“There's a certain arrogance to an actor who will look at a script and feel like, because the words are simple, maybe they can paraphrase it and make it better.”

“There's a certain freedom that comes when people don't expect you to be sexy.”

“There's a grace about the South and a toughness about it, too.”

“There's a style to doing period pieces, and you can't do a Western without understanding 'My Darling Clementine.'”

“There's just a total boatload of crazy that goes with singing live for the first time when you're 60 years old.”

“There's just such a premium on hurrying, and the camera is the be all and end all, and the actors had better hurry up and get it right and get it done.”

“There's something inside of me that just connects or doesn't connect with the project.”

“Ultimately, there are only two emotions: love and fear. And pretty much anything else you want to name can be broken down into one of those.”

“We don't want to be reminded that life ends at some point, so they don't put older people on the screen.”

“We're all very fond of a black box in our living room that works on diminishment of images, that spoons somebody up in a very limited way. It can be a reduction at its worst.”

“What a mother I am. I can't even make popcorn.”

“When you spend three months of your life doing a movie, it's important to enjoy yourself.”

“Whenever we start a new TV series, there's also a lot of question marks, and part of that is finding who you are.”

“Wii on Nintendo is amazing.”

“Will Forte is such a nice, extraordinarily creative human being. Utterly fearless.”

“Writing is essentially an internal process.”

“You don't get to make Westerns every day.”

“You've never seen anything until you've seen David Mamet be an Edwardian lady. He always conveys what he means, but he's so... masculine.”