“Every movie I make I find kind of excruciating. I get a lot back from it, but I feel like I'm kind of always working at the edge of my ability. I guess that's what I'm looking for when I go to work. I am trying to become the edge.”

“Everything's connected, and everything has meaning if you look for it.”

“For me, relationships are the real action movies. Bombs are exploding every day and the kitchen is Ground Zero.”

“Grief is like a moving river, so that's what I mean by it's always changing. It's a strange thing to say because I'm at heart an optimistic person, but I would say in some ways it just gets worse. It's just that the more time that passes, the more you miss someone.”

“I am a huge Leonard Cohen person.”

“I don't know what 15-year-old doesn't have a desire to separate themselves from their parents and prove their independence.”

“I don't know what my version of a relationship or marriage is yet, because the typical model seems a little broken to me.”

“I don't think things through very often - I don't project into the future about how a situation will turn out.”

“I experienced a lot of loss after his death. I lost my city because of all the paparazzi descending upon us. I actually lost my journal during that time, oddly enough. I literally couldn't hold on to anything.”

“I had always been kind of obsessed with making a home of my own and was always drawing rooms that I wanted to live in, down to pictures on the wall and the faces that would be in the photographs, and how the couches would be situated.”

“I like to do weird things in the shower, like drink my coffee, brush my teeth and drink a smoothie. It's good time management.”

“I started acting as a child in Community Theatre but I didn't do any serious stuff. It was all musicals like 'Annie' and 'Wizard of Oz.' I was always in the chorus.”

“I was born with a fierce need for independence.”

“I'm Norwegian.”

“I'm not a happy person when I'm working.”

“I'm very conscious of the fact that when I'm working, my daughter is not with one of her parents.”

“Is there anything better than making a kid laugh?”

“It felt as if things were literally slipping through my fingers. Things were just streaming away from me. I lost my sense of humor. I'm still looking for that.”

“It's all so personal, isn't it? It's hard to talk about work without talking about things that are personal. Work is personal. I don't want to talk about my personal life, but it's on my mind, and it's in my work.”

“I've come to learn that the choices I labor over and go back and forth about and ask a million people for their opinions and make lists about... those are always the wrong choices.”

“Listen, I've always been very headstrong.”

“Maybe it has something to do with turning 30. I don't feel as shy or nervous or self-conscious. I have more confidence that I can handle what life brings me. I don't feel scared to have an idea and express it.”

“One of the best things - and something I'm grateful for every time I walk onto a film set - is my six and a half years on Dawson's Creek and the experience it afforded me in how to get comfortable with the camera.”

“The idea that you can get everything you want in one person is destructive, and maybe when you accept that the number is closer to 50 or 60 or 70 percent, that's when you can start to make some progress in choosing the right person.”

“The possibilities are endless for me - Broadway, TV, music and film.”

“When my daughter asks, 'What do you do?', every movie I have a different answer. As she grows, she wants more explanations.”