Actresses from New York City

"It is not a dirty word, "feminism." I just think that women belong in the human population with the same rights as everybody else. … The problem is, "A feminist looks like this, or is like that." We are taught not to like ourselves as women, we are taught what we're supposed to look like, what our measurements are supposed to be. I never hear what measurements men are supposed to be. Just women."

"on tolerance of gays: "You always have to remember - no matter what you're told - that God loves all the flowers, even the wild ones that grow on the side of the highway.""

"on Catholicism:"

"Someone asked me if I wanted to make a New Year's wish, and I said yes — and it was that I'd like to see every young person in the world join the "Just Say No" to drugs club. Well, just the fact that Congress has proclaimed "Just Say No Week" and in light of all the activities taking place, it seems that my wish is well on its way to coming true."

"Our relationship is very special. We were very much in love and still are. Thank God we found each other. When I say my life began with Ronnie, well, it's true. It did. Forty-six years? Can't imagine life without him."

"I must say that acting was good training for the political life that lay ahead of us."

"I don't intend for this to take on a political tone. I'm just here for the drugs."

"I am a big believer that you have to nourish any relationship. I am still very much a part of my friends' lives and they are very much a part of my life. A First Lady who does not have this source of strength and comfort can lose perspective and become isolated."

"The time for a woman to serve as our President has come – really, now is the time — and I think the idea of having a former First Lady as the leader of the free world is really quite a marvelous notion. I want Hillary to win. Even though I admire two of the current potential Republican nominees, I have no interest in seeing either of them lead this country."

"As a mother, I've always thought of September as a special month, a time when we bundled our children off to school, to the warmth of an environment in which they could fulfill the promise and hope in those restless minds. But so much has happened over these last years, so much to shake the foundations of all that we know and all that we believe in. Today there's a drug and alcohol abuse epidemic in this country, and no one is safe from it — not you, not me, and certainly not our children, because this epidemic has their names written on it. Many of you may be thinking: "Well, drugs don't concern me." But it does concern you. It concerns us all because of the way it tears at our lives and because it's aimed at destroying the brightness and life of the sons and daughters of the United States."

"For 5 years I've been traveling across the country — learning and listening. And one of the most hopeful signs I've seen is the building of an essential, new awareness of how terrible and threatening drug abuse is to our society. This was one of the main purposes when I started, so of course it makes me happy that that's been accomplished. But each time I meet with someone new or receive another letter from a troubled person on drugs, I yearn to find a way to help share the message that cries out from them."

"Drugs steal away so much. They take and take, until finally every time a drug goes into a child, something else is forced out — like love and hope and trust and confidence. Drugs take away the dream from every child's heart and replace it with a nightmare, and it's time we in America stand up and replace those dreams. Each of us has to put our principles and consciences on the line, whether in social settings or in the workplace, to set forth solid standards and stick to them. There's no moral middle ground. Indifference is not an option. We want you to help us create an outspoken intolerance for drug use. For the sake of our children, I implore each of you to be unyielding and inflexible in your opposition to drugs."

"Our young people are helping us lead the way. Not long ago, in Oakland, California, I was asked by a group of children what to do if they were offered drugs, and I answered, "Just say no." Soon after that, those children in Oakland formed a Just Say No club, and now there are over 10,000 such clubs all over the country. Well, their participation and their courage in saying no needs our encouragement. We can help by using every opportunity to force the issue of not using drugs to the point of making others uncomfortable, even if it means making ourselves unpopular."

"Our job is never easy because drug criminals are ingenious. They work everyday to plot a new and better way to steal our children's lives, just as they've done by developing this new drug, crack. For every door that we close, they open a new door to death. They prosper on our unwillingness to act. So, we must be smarter and stronger and tougher than they are. It's up to us to change attitudes and just simply dry up their markets."

"And finally, to young people watching or listening, I have a very personal message for you: There's a big, wonderful world out there for you. It belongs to you. It's exciting and stimulating and rewarding. Don't cheat yourselves out of this promise. Our country needs you, but it needs you to be clear-eyed and clear-minded. I recently read one teenager's story. She's now determined to stay clean but was once strung out on several drugs. What she remembered most clearly about her recovery was that during the time she was on drugs everything appeared to her in shades of black and gray and after her treatment she was able to see colors again. So, to my young friends out there: Life can be great, but not when you can't see it. So, open your eyes to life: to see it in the vivid colors that God gave us as a precious gift to His children, to enjoy life to the fullest, and to make it count. Say yes to your life. And when it comes to drugs and alcohol just say NO."

"In 1981, when Ronnie and I moved to Washington, I never dreamed that our eight years there would be a time of so much emotion. But life in the White House is magnified: The highs were higher than I expected, and the lows were much lower. While I loved being first lady, my eight years with that title were the most difficult years of my life. Both of my parents died while Ronnie was president, and my husband and I were both operated on for cancer. Before we had even settled in, Ronnie was shot and almost killed. Then there was the pressure of living under the intense scrutiny of the media, and the frustration of frequently being misunderstood. Everything I did or said seemed to generate controversy, and it often seemed that you couldn't open a newspaper without seeing a story about me — my husband and me, my children and me, Donald Regan and me, and so on. I don't think I was as bad, or as extreme in my power or my weakness, as I was depicted — especially during the first year, when people thought I was overly concerned with trivialities, and the final year, when some of the same people were convinced I was running the show. In many ways, I think I served as a lightning rod; and in any case, I came to realize that while Ronald Reagan was an extremely popular president, some people didn't like his wife very much. Something about me, or the image people had of me, just seemed to rub them the wrong way."

"Although there is a certain dignity in silence, which I find appealing, I have decided that for me, for our children, and for the historical record, I want to tell my side of the story. So much was said about me — about astrology, and my relationship with Raisa Gorbachev, and whether I got Donald Regan fired, and what went on between me and my children, especially Patti. Ironically, I felt I could start rebuilding our private life only by going public on these and other topics — to have my say and then to move on. I often cried during those eight years. There were times when I just didn't know what to do, or how I would survive. But even so, I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything. I did things I never dreamed I could do, went places I never imagined I'd go, grew in ways I never thought possible."

"I kept a diary during our White House years, and I have drawn upon it often in this book. I experience the world through my intuitions and feelings, and you'll find out a lot about those in these pages. My mother used to say, “Play the hand that’s dealt you,” and that is what I have always tried to do. And this, for better or worse, is how it seemed to me."

"I was not the power behind the throne. Did I ever give Ronnie advice? You bet I did. I'm the one who knows him best, and I was the only person in the White House who had absolutely no agenda of her own — except helping him. And so I make no apologies for telling him what I thought. Just because you're married doesn't mean you have no right to express your opinions. For eight years I was sleeping with the president, and if that doesn't give you special access, I don't know what does! So yes, I gave Ronnie my best advice — whenever he asked for it, and sometimes when he didn't. But that doesn't mean he always took it. Ronald Reagan has a mind of his own."

"A lot of what acting is, is paying attention."

"Nancy Reagan became first lady during the height of the feminist movement, and women who were battling for their rights in a male-dominated world saw her as an anachronism. Reagan said her life began when she met her husband. The adoring look she focused on her Ronnie when they were in public became known as "the gaze," adding to the caricature of her as a rich Hollywood socialite who did not understand the concerns of a generation of women coming into their own as professionals and seeking equality. What her detractors failed to understand (and I was among them) was the substantive role she played behind the scenes at the White House in keeping her husband's presidency on track. She took the long view in looking after his legacy, intervening through favored surrogates to keep conservative ideologues from driving the agenda. Her insistence that no president could be considered great without reaching out to Soviet leaders trumped resistance from the right wing of the GOP. She was fiercely protective of her husband's image, less so of her own, and she paid the price. When some of her interventions became known, particularly in the personnel department, she was cast as Lady Macbeth —even though the firings she engineered won praise. ... Years later, with the benefit of hindsight and after watching Hillary Clinton's failed effort to achieve health-care reform, I came to believe Nancy Reagan deserved a fairer assessment. I wrote an op-ed piece that appeared in The Washington Post on Jan. 8, 1995, with the headline "Nancy with the centrist face: Derided as an elitist, Mrs. Reagan's impact was unequaled." I made the point that unlike Clinton, who took an office in the West Wing and was upfront about wanting to be a player, Reagan operated undercover, usually through a surrogate, and that she was a force for good. She rarely left fingerprints, but she got the job done, and her job was to play up her husband's strengths and cover for his weaknesses. She did both very well. The piece concluded with this line: "She is without doubt an effective First Lady, and she may yet win our hearts." Soon after I received a handwritten note from Mrs. Reagan saying, "I don't really know how to say this but when something very nice comes from an unexpected source, it's really appreciated — and if you see me in a different light now, I'm happy. I can only hope one day 'to win the heart.' " Later that same year, she cooperated with a Newsweek cover about her reconciliation with daughter Patti Davis, and how the president's Alzheimer's disease had brought the family together after literally decades of turmoil. Another handwritten note arrived shortly after with the lighthearted comment, "We've got to stop meeting like this!" After sharing her thoughts and emotions on her family's difficult times, Reagan said, "Hopefully I'm close to 'winning the heart.' " In looking back at these notes, I realize how much it meant to her to gain a measure of affection after being treated so harshly in the public eye."

"It took her husband's long illness and her grace in caring for him to show her critics what she was made of. Rarely did she spend more than an hour or two away from him, and during the decade of his decline, she guarded his image, his legacy, and his dignity. As his cognitive powers slipped away, eldest son Michael reminded him that he used to be president. "How did I do?" Reagan replied, his characteristic humor and humility intact. In the 1994 letter to the American people in which the former president revealed his illness, he wrote, "I only wish there was some way I could spare Nancy from this painful experience. When the time comes I am confident that with your help she will face it with faith and courage." In their life together, Ronald Reagan never worried about anything; Nancy worried about everything, carrying a burden few appreciated until the end. She didn't have his gift for storytelling, but she made sure all the parts were in place, and by honoring him, she was true to herself, a woman for all times."

"You didn't have to be a Reagan Republican to admire and respect Nancy Reagan. ... She was a tower of strength alongside her husband, had strong beliefs, and was not afraid to chart her own course politically. She persuaded her husband to support the Brady Law, and their advocacy was instrumental in helping us pass it."

"I appreciate the attention and prayers of people I will probably never meet. Just as when my father died, there is comfort in feeling surrounded by gentle thoughts and kind wishes, often sent out by strangers. And just as when my father died, we will honor my mother publicly — stand on the public stage and share as much as we can. Then, when that is completed, we'll draw the circle in a little tighter and deal with the often complicated map of personal loss."

"Her most famous moment as First Lady came almost by accident: the Just Say No campaign against drug use at a time when abuse was running out of control. "I was in California and I was talking to, I think, fifth graders, and one little girl raised her hand and said, 'Mrs. Reagan, what do you do if somebody offers you drugs?' And I said, 'well, you just say no.' And there it was born. I think people thought that we had an advertising agency over who dreamed that up — not true." Reagan called her "my secret weapon" in his fight against drug use."

"the 1980s, when Nancy Reagan's slogan "Just Say No" passed as high-level drug education."

"Reagan's legacy may be one of the few things Republican presidential candidates have agreed upon in recent weeks. Republican front-runner Donald Trump called Reagan an “amazing woman” on Twitter, and Sen. Ted Cruz recalled her “deep passion.”"

"When she greeted Gromyko, he leaned down to her and said, "Does your husband believe in peace?" She responded, "Yes, of course." Gromkyo responded, "Then whisper 'peace' in your husband's ear every night." Without missing a beat, Mrs. Reagan replied, "I will. And I'll also whisper it in your ear." Gromyko repeated the story many times over the years. It was a clear and unmistakable message coming from President's Reagan's closet and most influential adviser — his wife — that they had turned a new page in the relationship. The rest is history. President Reagan and Soviet President Gorbachev reached historic arms control agreements. Reagan went to Moscow. Gorbachev visited the United States. They ushered in a new era of peace that had been unequalled in modern times. Feminists today look at Nancy Reagan as an example of the old world, when women worried more about frivolous things like clothes and dinner parties. Let them. Nancy Reagan had more to do with successfully winning the Cold War than all the generals, diplomats and politicians ever could. Nancy Reagan may have been tiny in size, but she was a giant in stature. We have peace in the world today because that indomitable first lady took the first step."

"Nancy Reagan once wrote that nothing could prepare you for living in the White House. She was right, of course. But we had a head start, because we were fortunate to benefit from her proud example, and her warm and generous advice. Our former First Lady redefined the role in her time here. Later, in her long goodbye with President Reagan, she became a voice on behalf of millions of families going through the depleting, aching reality of Alzheimer's, and took on a new role, as advocate, on behalf of treatments that hold the potential and the promise to improve and save lives. We offer our sincere condolences to their children, Patti, Ron, and Michael, and to their grandchildren. And we remain grateful for Nancy Reagan's life, thankful for her guidance, and prayerful that she and her beloved husband are together again."

"I am saddened by the passing of my step mother Nancy Reagan...She is once again with the man she loved. God Bless... Nancy is where she has always wanted to be with her Ronnie...Now she is at peace..."

"With charm, grace, and a passion for America, this couple reminded us of the greatness and the endurance of the American experiment. ... Some underestimate the influence of a first lady but from Martha and Abigail through Nancy and beyond, these women have shaped policy, strengthened resolve, and drawn on our better angels. God and Ronnie have finally welcomed a choice soul home."

"She will be sorely missed by those who knew her, and forever remembered by a grateful nation."

"Ronald Reagan could not have accomplished everything that he did without his wife Nancy. As first lady, she brought a sense of grace and dignity to the White House. She roused the country to redouble the fight against drugs. And she showed us all the meaning of devotion as she cared for President Reagan throughout his long goodbye. She loved her husband, and she loved her country. This was her service. It was her way of giving back. And all of us are very grateful. So on behalf of the entire House, I wish to extend our condolences to the Reagan family and offer our prayers on the passing of a great American, Nancy Reagan."

"Usually, I talk with you from my office in the West Wing of the White House. But tonight there's something special to talk about, and I've asked someone very special to join me. Nancy and I are here in the West Hall of the White House, and around us are the rooms in which we live. It's the home you've provided for us, of which we merely have temporary custody. Nancy's joining me because the message this evening is not my message but ours. And we speak to you not simply as fellow citizens but as fellow parents and grandparents and as concerned neighbors. It's back-to-school time for America's children. And while drug and alcohol abuse cuts across all generations, it's especially damaging to the young people on whom our future depends."

"No matter how divisive the nation was during the Presidency, the First Ladies of this nation knew their job was to soften the rhetoric by loving all Americans equally – just like a mother would. ... She wants people to know that the First Ladies are tight. They get together once a year to support each other."

"I was hanging out the other night with a bunch of friends I've known forever. They were saying, "Look at you. You've grown into a swan." I looked at them and said, "My awkward phase lasted about three years longer than all of yours combined." I related to the physical and emotional awkwardness Mia goes through. She has incredibly low self-esteem. A lot of my life was spent having the same thing, but I'm getting over that now."

"Taking a year off and going to school was the best thing I could have done after The Princess Diaries. It taught me that I don't need Hollywood or a job to make me happy."

"We've all done things we shouldn't, it's just I did stuff at college, when nobody knew about it, so I'm not a saint. … I wasted time doing self-destructive things but it didn't work. I found out you can only dance on so many tabletops. I got that all out of my system and now I'm healthy and I'm grounded."

"Before I met him, I wasted so much time. I was just annoying and narcissistic and smelled bad. He’s protective without being possessive, passionate without needing to show his temper."

"My entire film career's been dependent on my ability to look unattractive."

"I have a lot more respect for it as a business. I understand fashion a lot more. Style, for me, is something I still can't get right."

"When I was younger I thought about becoming a nun for a while. You know how it is when you're growing up and you're going to be a lot of different things, but I actually wanted to be an actress before I wanted to be a nun. The nun was more of a side-bar thing."

"It's easier to think about the way I'm least daring. When I meet people for the first time, I'm friendly but shy. I'm much less outwardly nervous than I used to be, but I still get anxious sometimes. I'm not very daring in my street style, usually because there's a photographer around! I am getting more daring now—I'll wear my mom jeans in public that haven't been tailored 'just so' yet, just because they feel good. For a long time I was afraid of the harsh things people would say about me, but I might as well be happy."

"I did work at Christie’s for a couple of weeks, getting ready for The Devil Wears Prada, getting people coffee and doing whatever they needed around the office. It was amazing. I got to see some wonderful art and everybody was really nice. It was great."

"I’m always hyper-aware of how not to be a you-know-what. So to actually let it go and to lean into all the ridiculous fame nonsense that I’ve been trying to side-step for all of these years just felt really, really fun. It just felt great and to play someone who had such an enormous ego and someone who takes herself so seriously, and is so insufferable, came very naturally to me."

"The '80s to me, more than anything else, represents a time of real criminal activity in the office of the president: an incredibly disparate economy in terms of the class distinctions and whatnot, and a tremendous shallowness—a lot of sort of bank robbery by executives. This is the '80s to me. And a lot of synthesizer music. And, of course, Madonna and the beginning of MTV."

"I like to try new things. I like to go new places and I like to work with new people. That’s sort of the definition of my job. As an actor, you just go where the work is, right."

"They call me "Snorah", but Jesus, that slow music touches people!"

"I realize my strengths. The truth is, I sing ballads. People like it when I sing ballads. I seem to have a way with them. And if the cool kids can’t say anything nice about me, that’s how it is."

"I’m too sensitive. All I have to do is pick up Newsweek and glance upon a bad review and it will crush me for a week. Some Joe Schmo writes a snarky comment in a blog and I’m destroyed."

"I’m like, "Oh, I make slow music." I guess that’s okay. Maybe it's a good thing to sound like yourself."

"Something has to make you run I don't know why I didn't come"

"Lonestar Where are you out tonight? This feeling I'm trying to fight It's dark and I think that I would give anything For you to shine down on me"

"How far you are I just don't know The distance I'm willing to go I pick up a stone that I cast to the sky Hoping for some kind of sign"

"If I were a painter I would paint my reverie If that's the only way for you to be with me"

"I want to walk with you On a cloudy day In fields where the yellow grass grows knee high"

"I want to wake up with the rain Falling on a tin roof While I'm safe there in your arms So all I ask is for you To come away with me in the night Come away with me"

"It never rains when you want it to You humble me, Lord"

"I can't hold on very long Forgive me, pretty baby, but I always take the long way home"

"I love the things that you've given meI cherish you my dear countryBut sometimes I don't understand the way we play"

"What the fuck is going on? Who the fuck is Norah Jones? "Shady, wait a minute, baby, leave the whore alone. Just go up there and be humble and take them awards home.""

"Every year we went, I would be up for "Album of the Year" and then the winner is Norah Jones? Who? And I'm not even trying to say anything bad about her music. At that point, I had never heard of her and none of my friends did either and then Steely Dan. Okay, I know who Steely Dan is. Steely Dan back in the day. More than The Marshall Mathers LP impact? Okay, fine. I watched 50. 50 did not win Best New Artist at the Grammys. Nobody since Snoop came out the gate like that. My first album didn't do it. I never saw someone's first album and the wave happen like he had. And then he doesn't get it."

"I got a Jones like Norah for your soror."

"I knew I had a problem, and I couldn't admit it."

"Don't ever say this to me, "Are you O.K.?" It's like "Yeah, motherfucker, I'm fine.""

"It is clear to me that my life has become completely unmanageable because I am addicted to alcohol and drugs. Recently, I relapsed and did things for which I am ashamed. I broke the law, and today I took responsibility by pleading guilty to the charges in my case."

"You know what's hard? I want to give back. I want to do all the things that will make me feel fulfilled. But whenever I do those things, people think it's a press stunt or something. Because they do find me, and there's really no way of hiding from that. And the second that you complain about it, they say, "Well, this is what you wanted, so this is what you're going to get." That's all people see it as now. It's not, "No, I just want to have some time for myself." There are things I want to do, and people don't understand that. You know, my car accident that I got into, where I got my first charge, I wouldn't have been speeding up like I was if I didn't have people shoving cameras in my windows."

"I just feel as though it's become a situation where people have manifested this caricature of who I am, and they act as if there's no real person inside of it. I mean, people really have come to believe-directors, producers, agents, whoever it may be-that I started in this because I wanted to be a celebrity. But that was never my intention."

"I wanted to be a movie star. But movie stars are not what they used to be. When I was a kid, I thought movie stars were women and men who were in these great films that we still look at now...And people my age don't even know who those people are. I can't even have a conversation with most people of my generation about that, because they'd be like, "Okay, she's a freak..." And the worst part is, in terms of what people see of me, I have become this girl who just loves to be photographed, doesn't know how to focus, doesn't know how to work on set, just loves the attention, knows how to go out at night, knows how to party. And you know what? I was 20 years old. I never went to college. And I lived maybe six months out of my life like that, doing something wrong, and then I stopped. God forbid I should have ever learned my lesson. But at this point it's so hard for people to even believe that there was a lesson to be learned at all, because they just think I'm wrong. All these people think I'm never going to be right, because it's more interesting to fabricate this other girl. Who wants to read a tabloid story about a girl who is doing well?"

"I work just as hard as any other actress around my age, like Scarlett Johansson, but I just don't get the opportunities that they get because people are so distracted by the mess that I created in my life. But that doesn't mean it's going to last forever."

"Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie."

"Why don't you come up sometime and see me? … Come on up, I'll tell your fortune."

"Oh, Beulah, Peel me a grape."

"I only like two kinds of men, domestic and foreign."

"When I'm good, I'm very good. But when I'm bad, I'm better."

"It's not the men in your life that count, it's the life in your men."

"When women go wrong, men go right after them."

"A man in the house is worth two in the street."

"When I'm caught between two evils, I generally like to take the one I never tried."

"You ought to get out of those wet clothes and into a dry martini."

"You take one thing and add it to another and you get two. Two and two is four; and five'll get you ten if you know how to work it!"

"I used to be Snow White, but I drifted."

"I'm the kinda girl who works for Paramount by day, and Fox all night"

"To her British lover about to climb in bed with 80-something Mae: She said that she hoped soon to be able to say what Paul Revere said — 'The British are coming'. This was the last one-liner Mae ever uttered on film."

"Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"

"When you got the personality, you don't need the nudity."

"Marriage is a fine institution, but I'm not ready for an institution."

"Give a man a free hand and he'll run it all over you."

"I've been in more laps than a napkin."

"She's the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong."

"I've always had a weakness for foreign affairs."

"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough."

"I'm a songwriter first, have always been, and probably always will be. Making the demo is a natural product of writing a song; after that, I'm happy to hear other people do it in other ways."

"The song is the center; the song is the key. If you don't have a good song you don't have anything by my value."

"Tonight you're mine completely, You give your love so sweetly Tonight the light of love is in your eyes, But will you love me tomorrow?"

"I'd like to know that your love Is love I can be sure of, So tell me now and I won't ask again, Will you still love me tomorrow?"

"All you have to do is touch my hand To show me you understand And something happens to me. That's some kind of wonderful."

"I want to be your lover But your friend is all I've stayed. I'm only halfway to paradise, So near, yet so far away."

"My tears are fallin' 'Cause you've taken her away. And though it really hurts me so, There's something that I've gotta say.Take good care of my baby. Please don't ever make her blue. Just tell her that you love her. Make sure you're thinking of her In everything you say and do."

"Everybody's doin' a brand new dance now. Come on baby, do the locomotion. I know you'll get to like it if you give it a chance now. Come on baby, do the locomotion.My little baby sister can do it with ease; It's easier than learning your ABC's. So come on, come on do the locomotion with me."

"Chains, my baby's got me locked up in chains And they ain't the kind that you can see Woh these chains of love got a hold on me yeah."

"I'll never let you see The way my broken heart is hurting me. I've got my pride and I know how to hide All my sorrow and pain. I'll do my crying in the rain."

"What should I write? What can I say? How can I tell you how much I miss you? The weather here has been as nice as it can be, Although it doesn't really matter much to me. For all the fun I'll have while you're so far away, It might as well rain until September."

"When this old world starts getting me down And people are just too much for me to face, I climb way up to the top of the stairs And all my cares just drift right into space. On the roof, it's peaceful as can be And there the world below can't bother me. Let me tell you now."

"One fine day, you'll look at me And you will know our love was, meant to be. One fine day, you're gonna want me for your girl."

"Hey girl I want you to know I'm gonna miss you so much if you go. And hey girl I tell you no lie, Something deep inside of me's going to die If you say so long, if this is goodbye."

"He gets up each morning and he goes downtown Where everyone's his boss, And he's lost in an angry land. He's a little man. But then he comes uptown Each evening to my tenement. Uptown where folks don't have to pay much rent. And when he's there with me. He can see that he's everything. The man is tall, he don't crawl. He's a king."

"When my friends told me you had someone new I didn't believe a single word was true. I showed them all I had a faith in you I just kept on sayingOh, no, not my baby Oh, no, not my sweet baby You're not like those other guys Who lead you on and tell you lies."

"There's alot of things I want, a lot of things that I'd like to be. But girl, I don't foresee a rags-to-riches story for me. There's just one little dream I've got to come true; There's just one round I've gotta win, I can't be a loser with you. Baby, baby, once in my life, let me get what I want, Girl, don't let me down! Just once in my life, let me hold on to one good thing I found!"

"I think I'm going back To the things I learned so well In my youth. I think I'm returning to The days when I was young enough To know the truth."

"In the midst of all my darkness, baby You came along to guide me. You took pity on a lonely man When you said you'd stand beside me. I'll never forget you Or what you've done. I'll never turn my back on you for anyone.I've got so much love to give you. Baby, I've got so much love to give you. Girl, there's more than enough to last a whole life through, And it's all for you."

"Looking out on the morning rain, I used to feel so uninspired. And when I knew I had to face another day, Lord, it made me feel so tired. Before the day I met you, life was so unkind. Your love was the key to my peace of mind.'Cause you make me feel. You make me feel, You make me feel like A natural woman (woman)."

"When my soul was in the lost and found, You came along to claim it. I didn't know just what was wrong with me Till your kiss helped me name it. Now I'm no longer doubtful of what I'm living for, Cause if I make you happy I don't need to do more."

"The local rock group down the street Is trying hard to learn their song. They serenade the weekend squire Who just came out to mow his lawn. Another pleasant valley Sunday. Charcoal burning everywhere. Rows of houses that are all the same. And no one seems to care."

"Gotta make you love me the way you used to do Gotta get back the feeling and put wind in my sails And chart a course that gets me back to you, back to you. Oh, the lonely days, the lonely nights lookin' back in time. Time, don't run out on me."

"I feel the earth move under my feet I feel the sky tumbling down — tumbling down I feel my heart start to trembling Whenever you're around."

"So far away Doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore? It would be so fine to see your face at my door. Doesn't help to know you're so far away."

"You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face And show the world all the love in your heart The people gonna treat you better, You're gonna find, yes you will, That you're beautiful as you feel."

"If there's any answer, maybe love can end the madness Maybe not, oh, but we can only try."

"Way over yonder is a place I have seen In a garden of wisdom from some long ago dream."

"Way over yonder, that's where I'm bound."

"When you're down and troubled And you need some loving care And nothing, nothing is going right. Close your eyes and think of me And soon I will be there To brighten up even your darkest nights."

"You just call out my name And you know wherever I am I'll come running to see you again. Winter, spring, summer, or fall All you have to do is call And I'll be there, yeah, yeah, yeah. You've got a friend."

"Now ain't it good to know That you've got a friend When People can be so cold. They'll hurt you, kiss and desert you. And take your soul if you let them. Oh, but don't you let them."

"If you're out on the road, Feeling lonely, and so cold, All you have to do is call my name And I'll be there on the next train.Where you lead, I will follow Anywhere that you tell me to. If you need, you need me to be with you, I will follow where you lead."

"You can't talk to a man, with a shotgun in his hand."

"My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue An everlasting vision of the everchanging view A wondrous woven magic in bits of blue and gold A tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold."

"He moved with some uncertainty, as if he didn't know Just what he was there for, or where he ought to go Once he reached for something golden hanging from a tree And his hand come down empty..."

"It seemed that he had fallen into someone's wicked spell And I wept to see him suffer, though I didn't know him well."

"It's going to take some time this time To get myself in shape. I really fell out of line this time, I really missed the gate. The birds on the telephone line, (next time) Are cryin' out to me, (next time) And I won't be so blind next time And I'll find some harmony."

"Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, And sometimes the blues just get a hold of you. Just when you thought you had made it, All around the block people will talk. But I want to give it all that I've got. I just don't want, I don't want to waste it."

"Green fields and rolling hills, Room enough to do what we will. Sweet dreams of yestertime Are running though my mind Of a place I left behind. Been so long, I can't remember when, I've been to Canaan and I wanna go back again."

"Only love is real. Everything else illusion Adding to the confusion of the way we connive At being alive. Tracing a line till we can define The thing that allows us to feel. Only love is real."

"Now and forever, you are a part of me And the memory cuts like a knife. Didn't we find the ecstasy, didn't we share the daylight When you walked into my life?Now and forever, I'll remember All the promises still unbroken. And think about all the words between us That never needed to be spoken."

"And it's too late, baby, now it's too late Though we really did try to make it Somethin' inside has died and I can't hide And I just can't fake it."

"Out came Ms. Hilton in a Juicy track suit, chattering away like a gibbon on her jewel-encrusted cell phone. It was like magic, if magic were like a extra-strength laxative."

"Look at you, turning on me like a Pomeranian!"

"Your body is a temple, whether you're a Jew or not."

"[Referring to actress Winona Ryder] Get over it! Your "wide-eyed, gamine, trembling chipmunk" thing! Get over it!"

"[Referring to the radio station program director] I'll get him to call me some day, even if it means spilling cheese all over my brassiere at KFI, by gawd."

"I'm doin' radio and there's a bag in front of me on the console that says 'Butt Stink' on it. Somethin' ain't right."

"We've talked about coffee enemas and they're perfectly fine, except the doughnuts get stuck in the hose. And that just ruins everything."

"I was at a point where I was ready to say I am what I am because of what I am and if you like me I'm grateful, and if you don't, what am I going to do about it?"

"There are always good parts. They may not pay what you want, and they may not have as many days' work as you want, they may not have the billing that you want, they may not have a lot of things, but — the content of the role itself — I find there are many roles."

"If there are, let's say, 20 astronauts, there may be two women among those 20 astronauts. If there are 20 FBI guys, there's one woman and the rest are men. So when somebody writes a script about life, usually the leading role will be the man, because mostly what women do is at home taking care of the children...That's the most important job there is on Earth. And why shouldn't women have it since they are the better of the two sexes?"

"I don't quite jump for joy, but I am awfully glad to see him."

"First of all, you have to marry the right person. If you marry the wrong person for the wrong reasons, then no matter how hard you work, it's never going to work, because then you have to completely change yourself, completely change them, completely — by that time, you're both dead. So I think you have to marry for the right reasons, and marry the right person."

"He understands not only with his brain but with his heart. And that might be called love. Not quite sure, but maybe that's the key."

"I identified with both women. But Emma had a stronger message for the women I want to speak to now— women who work. I wanted to tell them that choosing to work doesn't make them oddballs and isn't antisocial."

"I am quite surprised, that with all my work, and some of it is very, very good, that nobody talks about The Miracle Worker. We're talking about Mrs. Robinson. I understand the world... I'm just a little dismayed that people aren't beyond it yet."

"To this day, when men meet me, there's always that movie in the back of their mind."

"Kind of like the difference between making love and masturbation, I'd say."

"It's great to see people who find joy in service and don't close their eyes and aren't afraid."

"Religion is not black and white. It's much more complicated. Spirituality is much bigger than that. God is much bigger than that. I don't believe in a wrathful God. I believe he's much more forgiving and inclusive than some religions. The things that are done in her name or his name are horrible."

"Every relationship starts out with a dream of what you think it's going to be, and you either have the tool kit when you get to the hard spots where you'll make it through, or you need to move on."

"Just because you donate sperm does not make you a father. I don't have a father. I would never give him the credit or acknowledge him as my father."

"Everyone who works with me calls me "Ma." I'm the motherly type."

"I do recommend the vegan diet because you wake up and feel great!"

"I grew up and I lived in the Bronx until my mid-20s, so I understand that life…And I’ve been lucky enough to grow into something else, but at the same time, those roots stay with you. Playing these characters is a chance to tap back into the core of who I am."

"I think as women, we have to do that all the time…We’re said to be the more Toodles sensitive gender, but I think the truth is that men are much more Toodles and sensitive. And we have to be stronger and more conscious of not hurting Toodles egos at times. So it’s a line you do have to tiptoe on all the time—especially as a strong, assertive woman, which can be off-putting to men who are not confident and secure on their own."

"There are so many smart, talented women out there, in front of and behind the camera, and I think we’re at a point where our voices are not stifled as much…Because of the #MeToo movement, it’s ‘We are equal, and we want to be treated that way.’ We’ve been making our own opportunities, and as you prove your worth and value to people, they can’t put you in a box. You hustle it into happening, right?"

"I'm the best. If you have the goods, there's nothing to be afraid of. If somebody doesn’t have the goods, they're insecure. I don't have that problem. I'm not the best actress that ever lived, but I know I'm pretty good."

"(In one of your essays in the book, from 2012, you write about Beyoncé and Jennifer Lopez and say they are "[d]oing no more than supporting and promoting patriarchal and capitalist goals." Do you still feel this way about them, even as they—Beyoncé especially—are often held up as feminist icons?) AC: I do, but I know that I would have a lot of women of color of younger generations argue with me about that. I come from a generation of radical feminism; we believed in not using your body for financial gain and that sexualization fed into violence against women. I know that dates me. The performances that both Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé give are highly sexually charged, and they've made a lot of money off of a lot of men by sexualizing themselves as exotic beauties. Both of them have dyed their hair blonde, straightened it, weaved it, which feeds into a fantasy about women and women of color. I come from a very different perspective, and I don't believe that anything in terms of personal gain or materialism is really helping the rest of the world. If you make that much money, instead of buying a humongous mansion, go back to your community and start community projects and talk to your legislators about changing some of the laws [that mean] young men of color who have felonies because [they dealt] drugs as teenagers can no longer integrate into society. Moving away from Beyoncé and J-Lo—I'm sure they do a lot of good deeds—I'm very lucky I have a roof over my head. I can eat healthy food, my children have coats in cold weather, they have an education. I don't think a human being needs much more beyond that."

"I put out an ad in the classifieds: ‘Wanted, superhero. I’m a damsel in distress’."

"Actually, I believe in the third season, one of the characters says, "Three hundred and something", which is the number of days from that point that I would appear on the show. Which is awesome."

"My meeting with Joss at the beginning of the season was kind of like, "Alright, welcome to the cast, you're a teenager, you're a Key, have fun."

"I'm usually the one who leaves a water bottle on set, because it gets thirsty under those bright lights."

"If you’re not falling, you’re not training hard enough."

"I never had a stage mother, which is probably one of the reasons why I’m still doing this."

"I've always felt that kids are really smart."

"I was always wanting to learn and be one of those actresses who can actually hold a conversation as opposed to standing there looking pretty."

"I feel that in order to truly be an actor, you have to differentiate yourself and your roles."

"I've had experiences before where a director is like, "Yeah, I wanted a blonde." Have you heard of hair dye?"

"How many women do we know who were continually kissed by Clark Gable, William Powell, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy and Fredric March? Only one: Myrna Loy... And to meet whom did Franklin D. Roosevelt find himself tempted to call off the Yalta Conference? Myrna Loy. And to see what lady in what picture did John Dillinger risk coming out of hiding to meet his bullet-ridden death in an alley in Chicago? Myrna Loy, in Manhattan Melodrama."

"I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that."

"Looking at yourself in a mirror isn't exactly a study of life."

"You just learn to cope with whatever you have to cope with. I spent my childhood in New York, riding on subways and buses. And you know what you learn if you’re a New Yorker? The world doesn’t owe you a damn thing."

"She's not a legend. She's a beginner. What is this 'legend'? She can't be a legend at whatever age she is. She can't be a legend, you have to be older."

"Nicole and I worked together on Dogville and we were friends when we started this. That laid the groundwork for our fabulous relationship on screen and off."

"When you talk about a great actor, you're not talking about Tom Cruise. His whole behavior is so shocking. It's inappropriate and vulgar and absolutely unacceptable to use your private life to sell anything commercially, but I think it's kind of a sickness."

"Imagination is the highest kite that can fly."

"The people I've known I must say are extraordinary. When I think about some of them, I can't believe that I knew them all. And I think the reason I knew most of them at the beginning was because they were of Bogie's generation, 25 years my senior, not mine. But they were the most talented people of all."

"I was Betty Bacall always. And Lauren was Howard Hawks... he felt that Lauren Bacall was better sounding than Betty Bacall. He had a vision of his own. He was a Svengali. He wanted to mold me. He wanted to control me. And he did until Mr. Bogart got involved."

"Bacall: I'm a total Democrat. I'm anti-Republican. And it's only fair that you know it. Even though..."

"Losing Bogey was horrible, obviously. Because he was young. And because he gave me my life. I wouldn't have had a — I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't met him — I would have had a completely different kind of life. He changed me, he gave me everything. And he was an extraordinary man."

"Well, his attention span was not long, shall we say."

"I love Nicole. Nicole and I happen to be very great friends. Besides that, the press never get it straight. They do not print what you say... We were in Venice for Birth at the Venice Film Festival. And you know when you have a day when you go from one room to another with the roundtables with about five journalists sitting around at each table throwing questions at you all the time. So in one of these rooms, I'm sitting there. And one of the journalists said, you're an icon and Nicole Kidman's an icon and what do you think about that? And I said, why do you have to burden her with the category? She's a young woman. She's got her whole career ahead of her. Why does she have to be pegged as an icon or as anything? Let her enjoy her time. Don't, you know, suddenly put her in a slot. And that was all I said. The word "legend" never came up. It was "icon.""

"A planned life is a dead life."

"I went to a sneak preview... I was sort of stunned by it, because you don't realize what you've done. I never knew what was going to happen, but they knew. Warners knew, and Howard knew."

"[B]adly, playing the Missouri Waltz, or something."

"That's absolutely one of my most favorite movies, for so many reasons. I fought for that part; I wanted it badly. I took a lower salary, I did everything. Grace Kelly said, "I'll never forgive you for playing that part. It was written for me". She [Kelly] got the prince [Rainier], I got the part."

"He was... a womanizer, he wanted to be in the sack with everybody."

"It's not an old movie if you haven't seen it."

"Her life speaks for itself … She lived a wonderful life, a magical life."

"People said Bacall was 'tough.' She's a pussycat with a heart of gold."

"[I]t was her modelling career that took off before the acting one when she was introduced to the Harper's Bazaar columnist Diana Vreeland by none other than Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg — not just an editor at the magazine but also a former actor who had played the leading role in Carl Dreyer's classic Vampyr (1932)."

"It could be that today's conservative movement remains in thrall to the same narrative that has defined its attitude toward film and the arts for decades. Inspired by feelings of exclusion after Hollywood and the popular culture turned leftward in the '60s and '70s, this narrative has defined the film industry as an irredeemably liberal institution toward which conservatives can only act in opposition—never engagement. Ironically, this narrative ignores the actual history of Hollywood, in which conservatives had a strong presence from the industry's founding in the early 20th century up through the '40s, '50s and into the mid-'60s]. The conservative Hollywood community at that time included such leading directors as Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, and Cecil B. DeMille, and major stars like John Wayne, Clark Gable, and Charlton Heston. These talents often worked side by side with notable Hollywood liberals like directors Billy Wilder, William Wyler, and John Huston, and stars like Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Spencer Tracy. The richness of classic Hollywood cinema is widely regarded as a testament to the ability of these two communities to work together, regardless of political differences."

"How would you like to have a father who keeps getting younger looking every year? Do you realize what that can do to a woman?"

"Being Henry Fonda's daughter got me started. But it didn't keep me working."

"The institution of marriage is obsolete"

"I vowed I wouldn't get married until someone gave me one good reason to. No one ever did - but I got married anyway"

"In this country the only way a minority can get anything done is to make a little noise."

"It's an unfair position, so you can do one of two things: just shut up, which is something I don't find easy, or just learn an awful lot very fast, which is what I tried to do."

"I believe that we cannot survive as a democratic country when we are supporting someone like Thieu in Saigon, who has put 300,000 political prisoners in jail because they've spoken in favor of peace. I just don't believe that when a Republican Party bugs the Democratic Party headquarters, that that smacks of democracy. These kind of things I speak out against. That doesn't mean I'm a Communist."

"Winning means some kind of approval of the Establishment which means people will more readily accept me, may be less frightened of me and other people who speak out"

"To be a revolutionary you have to be a human being. You have to care about people who have no power."

"I am saddened that I have been linked with her politically... I have disagreed with her on every issue, from the bottom of my toes"

"Women are not forgiven for aging. Robert Redford's lines of distinction are my old-age wrinkles."

"It's not about how you look, it's about how you feel. I can do more with ease and grace now at 52 than I could when I was 20. I can ride my bike 60 miles, I can handle stress, I have good muscle tone. That's what it's about. Not about being thin but about being healthy"

"I don't think there's ever been such a clear choice between radicalism and moderation. I mean, we are dealing with a radical ideologue here."

"It's a lie. I agree with the military experts who say it's a quagmire."

"The trick is to be Zen about it. Winning is sometimes not the prize"

"In the hyper-sensitized reality of the region in which any criticism of Israel is swiftly and often unfairly branded as anti-Semitic, it can become counterproductive to inflame rather than explain and this means to hear the narratives of both sides, to articulate the suffering on both sides, not just the Palestinians."

"This has gone on far too long, this spreading of lies about me! None of it is true. NONE OF IT! I love my country. I have never done anything to hurt my country or the men and women who have fought and continue to fight for us. I do not understand what the far right stands to gain by continuing with these myths."

"I believe that we have to strive for a transition to a socialist society … all the way to communism. I mean I think we should, uh, I think we should all study what the word means and I believe that if everyone knew what the word meant we would all be on our knees praying that we would, as soon as possible, be able to live under, uh, within a communist structure."

"Alternate form: I would think that if you understood what communism was, you would hope and pray on your knees that we would someday be communists. I am a socialist. I think that we should strive toward a socialist society - all the way to communism."

"Jane Fonda, who had eagerly agreed to participate in the rally, was on hand to make the appeal for funds."

"How’s this for a story? North Vietnam, 1972: Jane Fonda is in the midst of her visit when an N.V.A. officer gets an idea. He collects a group of American POWs from their septic dungeons, cleans them up, and has them mustered on parade to show his guest how well his embattled nation treats its prisoners.… Fonda moves down the line, greeting each man with encouragements like “Aren’t you ashamed you killed babies?” as she shakes his hand.… The POWs are beaten. Four die; one, Col. Larry Carrigan, survives—just barely, but it is he who tells about the incident. … It never happened. It’s folklore, but folklore of a curiously evolved sort. There was a real Colonel Carrigan, and he was a POW in Vietnam. But he never met Jane Fonda, and he has no idea how the maddening tale attached itself to him."

"You know, Jane Fonda never came back at all after the war. I wonder why. She’d made a tape I played that was very good. I heard that some years ago she made an apology in the United States for coming to Hanoi during the war. Is that true?"

"It only took 40 years. But finally, actress-turned-workout-specialist Jane Fonda has apologized for sitting on a Viet Cong anti-aircraft gun during her 1972 visit to North Vietnam. Fonda, who used her fame to push her radical leftism during her heyday, traveled to Hanoi in 1972 in solidarity with the Viet Cong. While there, she proceeded to blame the US for supposedly bombing a dike system, and did a series of radio broadcasts stating that US leaders were “war criminals.” Those broadcasts were replayed for American POWs being tortured by the Viet Cong. Later, when POWs spoke about their experiences of torture, Fonda would call them “hypocrites and liars,” stating, “These were not men who had been tortured. These were not men who had been starved. These were not men who had been brainwashed.” She explained that these POWs were “careerists and professional killers.” Now, four decades removed, sitting in the lap of luxury, Fonda has decided that the pictures on the anti-aircraft gun were a mistake. Not the actual visit – she stands by that. “I did not, have not, and will not say that going to North Vietnam was a mistake,” she said. “I have apologized only for some of the things that I did there, but I am proud that I went.”"

"On May 7, a few weeks after the accident at Three-Mile Island, I was in Washington. I was there to refute some of that propaganda that Ralph Nader, Jane Fonda and their kind are spewing to the news media in their attempt to frighten people away from nuclear power. I am 71 years old, and I was working 20 hours a day. The strain was too much. The next day, I suffered a heart attack. You might say that I was the only one whose health was affected by that reactor near Harrisburg. No, that would be wrong. It was not the reactor. It was Jane Fonda. Reactors are not dangerous."

"The message I got from my record label at the time — and this was on purpose — was that I wasn't selling enough. Even when the single was a hit, it wasn't enough of a hit — I never got to number 1; I only got to number 5. And MTV didn't like the first video for the song, and we had to do another one. So I never felt anything except how bad I was and like, "Oh, shame on you!""

"Damn I wish I was your lover I'll rock you till the daylight comes Make sure you are smiling and warm."

"I am everything Tonight I'll be your mother— I will Do such things to ease your pain Free your mind and you won't feel ashamed."

"Shucks, for me there is no other You're the only shoe that fits I can't imagine I'll grow out of it."

"I'm dancing in the shadows of life And death is all around me tonight I miss you making love to me right Beside myself I'm holding you tight Someone is waiting for me to rise And drive into the ocean I cried And I cried and I cried my baby to sleep Beside myself my soul to keep Right beside you I see Right beside you I stay Right beside you I'll be Right beside you always."

"It felt like spring time on this February morning In a courtyard birds were singing your praise..."

"As I lay me down to sleep This I pray That you will hold me dear Though I'm far away I'll whisper your name into the sky And I will wake up happy"

"It's not too near for me Like a flower I need the rain Though it's not clear to me Every season has its change And I will see you When the sun comes out again."

"This documentary has lifted the lid off a coffin, and now I'm looking at stuff that I didn't know was there."

"So many people are throwing up their hands because the world has gotten so dark, but I went against the current and I actually found more light and positive energy. That was a great feeling."

"The reality is that we're all in the wilderness, and we have to survive on our own, and things constantly change and if we don't accept that, then we're just trying to fool ourselves. But the beauty of wilderness is that sometimes you can wake up in the morning and feel so sweet and whole."

"Before I was signed, I just wanted to get into the system, even though I didn't know what that meant. After I got signed I found that I was confused by all the mixed messages from the label about what I'd have to do to keep their support. I fought and fought to maintain my identity and grow as an artist at the same time, but when I realized that to get their support on Timbre I'd have to start working with schlocky writers and totally sell out, I decided to pack up my marimba and split."

"I used to be more dogmatic, more disciplined and segregated about my time to work; now I have to jump from one song to another, or score a scene in a movie, then get out the door for a performance at a moment's notice. The illusion of control over my schedule is totally obsolete. There is no way to say, "I can't do that right now." It's "Yes, thank you for the opportunity, whatever it takes to get the music out there.""

"If I never make another film, I don't care as long as I'm true to what I believe in, which is being kind."

"Females are the most beautiful, gorgeous creatures in the whole world. And I think that we are gorgeous no matter what size we are."

"I've never met him. It was mind-blowing. I couldn't quite believe it. He's a person that's seen so many things and been a part of music for so long. For him to give a shit about me is pretty exciting. I like it."

"It feels so good to know that it’s going to go across the country and this cast, let me tell you, is out of control. They’re so good."

"I love, as an artist, bringing my energy to other artists. That’s really a fulfilling feeling. So, I’ll be fairy godmothering. You never know where you’ll see me."

"It’s strange that we don’t think of women as producers like Quincy [Jones] or Dre or [Swizz Beatz], but female producers have always powered the industry: Patrice Rushen, Missy Elliott, Linda Perry, Grimes, Solange, and so many more."

"To live fully is to recognize the beauty of the now, unburdened by the past or future."

"Can give ourselves flowers and roses at any time. The affirmation is embrace your journey. Your body is evolving with you."

"Our beliefs produce emotions that drive our actions. It's true that you get what you believe. Own your strengths and know your value!"

"Like being in the mother brain of soul music. This is absolute artistic fusion from top to bottom, and I don't think there's anyone else in the world that I could do that with right now."

"There's nothing about that girl I don't like."

"That's hot!."

"I used to act dumb. It was an act. I am 26 years old, and that act is no longer cute. It is not who I am, nor do I want to be that person for the young girls who looked up to me. I know now that I can make a difference, that I have the power to do that. I have been thinking that I want to do different things when I am out of here. I have become much more spiritual. God has given me this new chance."

"You're a fucking bitch. I'm going to destroy you."

"To me, anything goes. But that's me."

"You need to look like a lady at the Oscars. Otherwise, Joan Rivers will tear you apart. Then again, you aren't really anyone till Joan Rivers tears you apart."

"The only rule is don't be boring and dress cute wherever you go. Life is too short to blend in."

"What's Wal-mart? Do they sell Walls and stuff?"

"Sometimes the things that come out of my mouth are mortifying."

"I’m a movie star. Can I talk to my entertainment lawyer?"

"As a rule people don’t think other people on drugs are funny. They think they are tragic. They have a point, but I still had the funny."

"Look, I’m not thrilled that perfect strangers get to have an opinion about me or feel like they know me, but I have enough perspective to know they don’t know me, and I do have a life and I don’t live it for other people.… My reality is very different from what everyone read. The problem is because I did get myself in a lot of trouble, I didn’t get to do the kind of work that maybe I should have been doing, so it became confusing who I really am and what I am really about … It’s totally fucking strange to me that people took a lot of that fucking stuff seriously. … It’s not their fault that they don’t know me personally. Who’s got the time?"

"My fault has been honesty and I've been sentenced to a lifetime of independent movies, and that's it. That's how it feels right now."

"Honestly, I'm as rebellious as I used to be and my definition of shaking things up isn't what it used to be."

"I'm not a movie star. I'm an actor, clearly, but at the same time, I don't have anything else going on. My hobbies are movies and going to the Film Forum and sitting there during the day for the double feature. That's my life. My life is music, books and movies, that's all I know. That's all I care about and I mean, as a fourteen year old kid, I was reading Entertainment Weekly and was curious about what was going on and I still read US Weekly. I don't give a shit. The point is that I wish that I had life outside of this, and I think that if this is what I'm doing then at least I want it to be a little bit more interesting or important."

"I guess that is my biggest fear, sort of worrying about the fact that I keep getting more insecure as time goes on rather than feeling more grand with each turn. I feel more and more afraid. When I get my picture taken, I'm convinced it's because I must look terrible and they're going to put it in US Weekly as a joke."

"The audience is equally responsible for making Scary Movie 3 as the studio system is because as long as they continue to go see Fast and Furious 4, they're going to make it. You have to remember that studio heads went to NYU and stuff and film school and they wanted to make great films and were seduced by The Godfather and instead, this is the world that were in."

"The greatest actors never go too far away from their skins when they approach characters … Looking at her past films and even American Pie, you can see why she is a star. She brings elements of herself into all of the work she does. She doesn’t look outside of herself for her roles, she looks inside of herself."

"She’s extraordinary … She is creative and she is free, and most importantly, you believe her. … Her instincts are just like Meryl Streep’s. Natasha Lyonne has that ability — that good, intuitive instinct for the creation of another being in front of the camera … That’s the truth."

"I’ve interviewed actresses before. They smile, struggle to charm, remember not to offend. They shamelessly self-promote and talk about what an honor it is to work with such-and-such, but Lyonne’s a different breed. In the very nicest way possible, she tells me, “It’s not my job to be an appealing famous person for you,” as she takes out a cigarette. She takes her time, holding it unlit. It took her 20 minutes before she even smoked her first one, and I ask if she wants to just light it already."

"I’m happy that you really care But do you really know how scary This is for you and is for me Oh do you know Do you really know Oh Natasha, all I can do Is write a song for you."

"I'm an actor. That's what I do. I'm not a stand-up comic. I do characters. I'm very good. I'll be better. But right now I'm a very good actor."

"But I want very much to be accepted as a good actor, and I have to admit this. Just before the first screenings of The Color Purple, I had some doubts about my name. Steven had told me the billing would read, "And Introducing Whoopi Goldberg as Celie." I had nightmares that when it appeared, a little ripple of laughter would run through the audience and it would grow and grow until it became a horrendous roar of guffaws. Well, I forced myself to go to a screening, and when my name appeared, all I could think was, "Oh, my, how elegant that looks!" And no one laughed at all.""

"Actresses can only play women. I'm an actor, I can play anything."

"The name was a fluke. A joke. It started when I was doing A Christmas Carol in San Diego. We'd sit backstage and talk about names we'd never give our children, like Pork Pie or Independence. Of course, now people are walking around with those names. A woman said to me, "If I was your mother, I would have called you Whoopi, because when you're unhappy you make a sound like a whoopee cushion. It sounds like a fart." It was like "Ha-ha-ha-ha—Whoopi!" So people actually started calling me Whoopi Cushion. After about a year, my mother said, "You won't be taken seriously if you call yourself Whoopi Cushion. So try this combination: Whoopi Goldberg."

"Most of all, I dislike this idea nowadays that if you're a black person in America, then you must be called African-American. Listen, I've visited Africa, and I've got news for everyone: I'm not an African. The Africans know I'm not an African. I'm an American. This is my country. My people helped to build it and we've been here for centuries. Just call me black, if you want to call me anything."

"Thanks! Ever since I was a little kid, I wanted this! You don't know...my brother sitting there, he says "Thank God we don't have to listen to anymore... you can do it now!" My mom's home, everyone's watching... I have to thank the people at Paramount; I have to thank Jerry Zucker for taking the time he took before he decided to use me because he was sure it was for me... I have to thank Patrick Swazye... he was a stand up guy and went to them and said "I wanna do it with her"… I wanna thank Demi... I wanna thank everybody who makes movies... I come from New York; as a kid, I lived in the projects and you're the people I watched...you're the people that made me wanna be an actor... I'm so proud to be here, I'm proud to be an actor and I'm gonna keep on acting, and thank you so much!"

"Normal is nothing more than a cycle on a washing machine."

"I know it wasn't rape-rape. I think it was something else, but I don't believe it was rape-rape."

"For many, many, many years, there were not Jews in Israel. Okay?"

"Well, when I was nine years old, Star Trek came on, I looked at it and I went screaming through the house. 'Come here, mum, everybody, come quick, come quick, there's a black lady on television and she ain't no maid!'"

"So you want to bring this up? Being black, I recognize blackface, this I can say, OK? I know it when I see it."

"Let’s be truthful, the Holocaust isn’t about race, it’s not. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man, that’s what it’s about. These are two groups of white people,"

"As I watched the main rally, I was thrilled to see people like Whoopi Goldberg risking the wrath of the neo-fascists in our midst and risking monetary losses and damage to her career"

"All I ever wanted to do was act. And pay my bills"

"I grew up as a tomboy. I was always barefoot, running races with the guys on the block, climbing trees, and beating kids up."

"Your audience gives you everything you need. They tell you. There is no director who can direct you like an audience. You step out on the stage and you can feel it is a nervous audience. So you calm them down. I come out before an audience and maybe my house burned down an hour ago, maybe my husband stayed out all night, but I stand there. I'm still. I don't move. I wait for the introduction. Maybe I cough. Maybe I touch myself. But before I do anything, I got them with me, right there in my hand and comfortable. That's my job, to make them comfortable, because if they wanted to be nervous they could have stayed home and added up their bills."

"Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you?"

"John always said he had three favorite women. Fanny Brice, Carole Lombard and me."

"People lose their senses at the beach 'cause the sun beats down too hard. They say things that just don't gel, you know. Well, you've heard this a lot: "Pick up a shell - oh, you can hear the ocean!" You could pick up a bicycle and hear the ocean - you're at the beach. Put the shell down, you'll hear the ocean twice as loud."

"I'm a tough old broad from Brooklyn. Don't try to make me into something I'm not. If you want someone to tiptoe down the Barkley staircase in crinoline and politely ask where the cattle went, get another girl."

"People talk about 'my career,' but 'career' is too pompous a word. It was a job, and I have always felt very privileged to be paid for what I love doing."

"I could understand if they picked Katharine Hepburn, but of course she wouldn't do it. But when they asked me, I thought at first it was a mistake. I thought they got me mixed up with Bette Davis. Attention embarrasses me. I don't like to be on display. I was always an extrovert in my work, but when it comes time to be myself I'll take a powder every time."

"I never got a Oscar. I never had an acting lesson. Life was my only training."

"My only problem is finding a way to play my fortieth fallen female in a different way from my thirty-ninth."

"There's nothing phony about her, either in life or on the screen."

"Working with Barbara Stanwyck was one of the greatest pleasures of my career."

"Here was an actress that never played just one side of a character. She always played the truth. I once asked Barbara Stanwyck the secret of acting, and she said, "Just be truthful, and if you can fake that, you've got it made.""

"With Barbara Stanwyck, here was a true pro, in her last year of screen stardom. We shot mostly on locations just to save money. One day, I saw her applying her own makeup beside the truck before the shoot. She looked up and just shrugged. Who could blame her? This production was cost-efficient."

"The dying process begins the minute you are born, but it accelerates during dinner parties."

"Broadway has been very good to me. But I've been very good to Broadway, too."

"Everyone thinks I'm Jewish. I'm not. Last year I got a call: "Happy Hanukkah." I said "Ma, I'm not Jewish.""

"Republican Party hasn't been black friendly over the many centuries in this country."

"I read a lot of things about myself that aren't true … I've read that I've been with people I've never met. It's nice not to have any attachment, but, likewise, it's nice to have a boyfriend. I'm open to that. But it's hard, when you're working constantly, to spend enough time with someone."

"Well you know, I don’t think I have never really seen a film of this genre, where the female characters' sex appeal sort of came second. I mean of course they’re sexy characters. When you have a sexy secretary, or a girl swinging around by her ankles in a cat suit, you know that’s innately sexy, but the fact is that these characters are intelligent. They’re ambitious. They’re motivated and calculated to some degree."

"I am very independent. I can look after myself but I still need a lot of love and care."

"If you love something, you have to set it free!"

"It's important not to lose who you are in a relationship just because it's nice to cuddle with somebody."

"When we live our lives every day, we're met by opportunities, and most of us don't even recognize them."

"Everything you do is different, and you find different chords in every character that you play that strike true with you."

"A great woman needs a man who will love her and treat her with dignity, but she is so impatient that she gives in to the first man who knocks on her door without caring so much about his attitude towards her."

"I believe that luck is opportunity meeting preparation."

"Just because you're in the spotlight, or just because you're an actor or making films or whatever, doesn't mean that you're not entitled to your own personal privacy. I think no matter what the context, if that is besieged in some way, it feels unjust. It feels wrong."

"It's important to figure out your own life before involving someone else."

"It is important to remind young people that peace is the only victory."

"Powerful women often get concerned with this idea that they’re going to be seen in this unforgiving light. Screw that. It’s so old-fashioned… It’s so uninspired and actually really cowardly."

"I always come back to the fact that my own instinct is better than something I build in my mind."

"Fitness is such an important part of my mental wellness."

"I think Scarlett Johansson is going to become our new alien overlord — of Earth, and life as we know it — based on Her, in which she plays a sentient computer system that ends up expanding to fill the universe, based on Under the Skin in which she plays an extraterrestrial creature attached to some sort of hive-mind, and definitely based on Lucy, Luc Besson's new movie. … She plays the sort of average American dimwitted student in Taiwan who accidentally ingests a new drug that allows her to access a hundred percent of her brain — which turns her into, by the end of the movie — I don't want to give too much away, but basically — she's God, by the end of the movie."

"I don’t know any other movie star going where Johansson has gone lately — certainly among the crop that sells magazine covers — and it’s probably beside the point asking whether she’s tired of the standard roles offered to pillow-lipped young actresses or is actively engaged in exploring the outer limits of power and perception. Of classic stars it was said “They had faces then.” Well, Johansson has a brain, and it appears to be expanding at an alarming rate. Somebody call the professor."

"Scarlett Johansson thought she had the fame game sussed. On the eve of what was to be her breakout role in Lost In Translation, the actress had a solution to control her expected burgeoning stardom. "I'll just walk around with a big pair of sunglasses and continue to eat at McDonald's," she quipped the first time we met. At the time, the then 18-year-old probably didn't fully appreciate what was in store for her. … Robert Redford declared, when he directed her seven years ago in The Horse Whisperer, that she was "13 going on 30". Despite her undoubted intelligence and level-headiness (she worked on the jury at last year's Venice Film Festival), you wouldn't blame her for getting swept away with such exposure. The young actress, though, insists she has a grip on the situation. "I don't know if I've got swept up," she said. "It's so shocking when you hear that Calvin Klein wants you for their new campaign. You're like, 'Who? Me?' I guess you have to decide where you draw the line between you saying, this is fun, pretty and fabulous, and being overexposed.""

"Personality is more important than beauty, but imagination is more important than both of them."

"Acting is the physical representation of a mental picture and the projection of an emotional concept."

"Beautiful women seldom want to act. They are afraid of emotion and they do not try to extract anything from a character that they are portraying, because in expressing emotion they may encourage crow's feet and laughing wrinkles. They avoid anything that will disturb their placidity of countenance, for placidity of countenance insures a smooth skin."

"Instinct is the direct connection with truth."

"I don’t know if people are meant to be together. You have to have a lot in common, choose well and be really fortunate. It’s not like you’re sprinkled with fairy dust. You have to believe that love will be there when you need it."

"It just seems like the most successful, iconic love stories are not so easy or escapist. I think the ones that stay with us and resonate are full of conflict, discord and misunderstandings 'cause that's what makes drama happen or tension even if it's a comedy. I think people who make movies and have invested a lot of money in them, get frightened that if they challenge an audience they are going to repel them. And I think the opposite, it's really true. It takes confidence and courage to know that and then commit to it."

"Anybody who knows how to make a good movie, knows that it's a collaborative undertaking. To deny that its really dangerous."

"This business can be very erratic and intense … You can be the subject of great attention, both positive and negative. You really do have to tether yourself when you're a teen star. If you don't have that tether, then you're really lost."

"It's not called stalking...it's called "passionately following"."

"Pa was forced to be a hobo Because he played the oboe And the oboe it is clearly understood Is an ill wind that nobody blows good"

"And why do I sew each new chapeau With a style they most look positively grim in? Strictly between us, entre-nous I hate women."

"I always loved how people like Jon Voight and Laurence Olivier shocked you every time they came on-screen. They were so different each time. That's what I hope to do with acting — be the chameleon and not get stuck in a type."

"I tend to gravitate toward the more powerful roles. As opposed to the doe-eyed girl who bats her eyelashes and runs around in towels, you now what I mean? Because that kind of makes me want to vomit.""

"I really like Shakespeare a lot. The characters that he writes for females, I think, are really great and a lot more compelling than what modern writers write, which is weird because they didn't have actresses then."

"Playing Paula in The Business of Strangers was extremely cathartic and wonderful for me because Patrick Stettner (the director) constantly encouraged me to be un-self aware. The character is very elusive and bold, but my experience of having people confuse bluntness with bitchiness has made me shy away from it, or it has made me too aware of the reactions I get from people. So Patrick undid all that by telling me to ignore what the response might be to Paula. It was almost like being a kid again, and it was a very empowering feeling."

"I definitely worry about that. I think about it all the time because that's the way Hollywood thinks. It's all about momentum and keeping your name out there, and college certainly takes you away from that. But, if I look at it in the longer term, it's so worthwhile."

"The way Miramax handled it was B.S. There were a lot of crossing political agendas going on, and the reasons in the press weren't entirely true. It was like 'Are we seeing the same movie here?' I've always thought it's better to get people talking about the issue of school violence as opposed to trying to pretend it didn't happen."

"Being an actor is looked at like a prolonged game of dress-up. America puts movie stars on pedestals. In college, it's the flip side. I sometimes have to justify my job to my professors because they're focused on intellect and ideas."

"She's not your typical cheesecake pinup girl. She's beautiful and talented and has the mouth of a truck driver when necessary."

"I'm not the youngest person at the table anymore. I'm not the young precocious one. I feel like I'm engaging with people in a different way now. I am a woman. I'm treated with respect, as an equal."

"He hit it in the entire performance [in Batman]. It's so difficult to do that in a huge movie like this and much easier to do in the tiny movies. That's why those are always the people who win Academy Awards. Heath was [amazing]; it's so unusual, and it happens really rarely even for the best actors, that you just hit this stride in a role and you're totally free."

"I feel it's OK if not everybody agrees with me or likes me. The weird thing was it turned into people thinking I said we deserved it. I didn't say that - but Americans do need to look at their behavior in the world. It's easy to say, "That was awful," and hard to ask, "Is there a way I can amend?""

"The truth is nobody finances tiny movies anymore. I mean there are so many movies I like that I hope will get their money together. It's a different world than it was when I first started making independent movies. Something is really wrong right now. I was a part of it and things are so different now. You can't make a movie for three million dollars with a kind of known actor. It's impossible. I think in general it has to do with the financial state of the country. It's tough for everybody in every business, but the independent movies have really suffered I think…they would never have made Secretary. They never would have financed Secretary with an unknown actress and James Spader. There's just no way."

"When I first saw it the first time, when I first saw him I felt... I felt upset. He's so good in the movie. He's incredible in it. It's so difficult to talk about. It's not an easy thing to sum up. I think he's great. Being around someone, acting with someone like that, is really inspiring and fun. It's very difficult to talk about. This isn't really the place where you open your heart up."

"Although it takes place in Gotham City and fundamentally it is a movie about Batman, Chris wanted us to play everything for truth. The actors he chose for this movie are into realism."

"I was born in Staten Island, New York. But I call my hometown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, because that's basically where I ended up from age eight on. But right after Staten Island... I've lived everywhere from Texas, to Japan for three years, to New Jersey. I'm this traveling girl. My father was in the Army, so I guess I'm an Army brat."

"I think an artist can fit under a few different categories depending on how much you explore your creativity. It can vary from artist to artist from musician to performer to vocalist. I thrive on creativity. So in the long run I want to be an all around entertainer."

"Even when I was little, I knew I was meant to perform. I would watch specials on TV or videos of Janet or Whitney, and I would start crying because I was like 'I want that so bad'."

"We are coming slowly but surely around a corner, not taking the things that we used to."

"I think that whatever size or shape body you have, it's important to embrace it and get down! The female body is something that's so beautiful. I wish women would be proud of their bodies and not dis other women for being proud of theirs!"

""You need to find the power within to make things happen for yourself. When you realize this, you are unstoppable.”"

"It was heartbreaking because I found out he played for your team, not mine."

"To be given the opportunity to help shape new artists' careers and mentor them to see their dreams come to fruition is a task I welcome with open arms."

"I changed my name when I was about twelve because I didn't like being called Sue or Susie. I felt I needed a longer name because I was so tall. So what happened? Now everyone calls me Sig or Siggy."

"I had such great teachers in high school who made me feel like I could do anything. Then to go to Yale, where these drama teachers made me feel like shit—if I have any advice for young people, it would be, "Don't listen to teachers who say, 'You're really not good enough.' " Just teach me. Don't tell me if you think I'm good enough or not. I didn't ask you. Teachers who do that should be fired."

"I’d send out an intergalactic invitation to other species. I guarantee they would not be like the aliens in the movies I did. I think if they can get here, they could be charming. Stephen Hawking said aliens would be coming for our resources. Well, I don’t know what planet he’s talking about, we don’t have any resources to give them! We’re plundering our own planet. Unless garbage and plastic is something they need, in which case, we could work out a good deal."

"There`s only so much bad luck that a person can have. For her to continue to wake up and con-front the alien and resolve the situation, then go back to sleep and wake up to yet another situation-to me, it`s a burden on the whole science-fiction premise of the alien."

"I feel very complete about her. I think she`s more vulnerable. I think she is truly alone. It`s very interesting to play a character who is truly alone, especially a woman, because women are always seen in relation to men or to other woman. It was a very-not to put our audience off-but it was a very existential situation in many ways."

"I guess I don`t think of film as an innovative medium. I guess I feel that film kind of caught up to what`s been happening to women for the last 20 years."

"With the `60s and the `70s, television gave people a real appetite for violence and slickness. And, for a long time, there was a reluctance to put women in that world. Now, we`ve sort of forced our way in-and I don`t think we`re going to leave."

"(Ripley is) open, honest and tries to do the right thing. I've always played Ripley as an ordinary person who is in extraordinary circumstances, and doesn't give up. I'm not playing a strong feminist statement; I'm playing this woman who has no one else to rely on."

"It was never important to me to display my sexuality. I didn't feel like I had to prove I was a babe to anyone. So I think maybe I always took parts based on the story and director, and very rarely on what the character was. (The roles) I get offered (are) isolated women. . . . It is easier for them to see me as a woman on my own. I can have a token love story, but in the end I'm gonna be this strong woman. Maybe it's harder for them to see me in a couples situation."

"I would rather have stayed in the theater and done comedy. Comedy in film (was) so narrow for women. I was much happier doing very black comedy onstage, and I could never find anything of that ilk on film. The closest to what I might have accomplished was `Working Girl.'"

"Weaver has been struggling with forms of acceptance all her life. The daughter of British actress Elizabeth Inglis and former NBC president Sylvester (Pat) Weaver (he created both the "Today" and "Tonight" shows), Susan Weaver (she adopted the name Sigourney at age 14, from a character in "The Great Gatsby") was reared a child of privilege on Manhattan's upper East Side. But Weaver never felt entirely comfortable with her upbringing. She decided to do a 180 from her expected role in life: during her stay at Stanford University, where she majored in English, Weaver was part of a theater troupe that protested the Vietnam War. She also took to wearing an elf suit, and lived with her boyfriend in a tree house. "It was very natural," says Weaver. "I had a boyfriend, we both played the flute, we made our own clothes. We certainly didn't attract more attention than anyone else around us.""

"Quickly, in one glance, you begin to understand why, as a tall girl, she was called Amazon by her boarding-school classmates and why, as a beautiful girl, she resented it -- so much so that by her father's account, she went and changed her name from Susan to the more stylish Sigourney, lifting it from an F. Scott Fitzgerald story."

"I prefer not to have any image, or any one image," she says, now curled on a couch in a suite at the hotel and sheathed in black, one shoulder bared. "It's because I come from the theater originally. My dream, when I was a young actor, was to be in a repertory company, where you could play the maid in one piece and then play the leading lady in another, and go from comedy to drama and really hop all over the place. And I actually realized a long time ago that you can't expect anything to happen; you can't expect anyone else to know what you want, where you want to go next. So I guess what I'm always doing is trying to create this mini-rep company in my head."

"People don't remember that Sigourney has been one of the first serious actors able to piece together a career that incorporated every aspect of the movie-making spectrum," Mr. Schamus says. "People thought that Bruce Willis had broken that ground in Pulp Fiction. Excuse me? She's been doing this all her life."

"I've had a lot of unhappiness in my life — and a lot of happiness. Who doesn't? Maybe I've learned enough to be able to guide my daughters."

"I have always felt that one of the secrets of real beauty is simplicity."

"Perhaps if we thought for a second of the classic, simple elegance of the Spanish lady it might help us to be "simply" ourselves."

"Movies were much better in the days when I was doing them."

"I'm an afternoon person."

"Nobody makes up my mind for me. They used to at Columbia."

"Everybody else does nude scenes, but I don't. I never made nude movies. I didn't have to do that. I danced. … I was provocative, I guess in some things. But I was not completely exposed."

"Just because I was married to Aly Khan, people think I'm rich. Well, I'm not. I never got a dime from Aly or from any of my husbands."

"Dancing in Tijuana when I was 13 — that was my "summer camp." How else do you think I could keep up with Fred Astaire when I was 19?"

"Men fell in love with Gilda, but they wake up with me."

"To have ego means to believe in your own strength. And to also be open to other people's views. It is to be open, not closed. So, yes, my ego is big, but it's also very small in some areas. My ego is responsible for my doing what I do — bad or good."

"A person who's a bitch would seem to be mean for no reason. I'm not a mean person. Maybe I'm rude without being aware of it — that's possible."

"Secretary Madeleine Albright was a good friend of mine for the last 28 years. I am so sad about losing a good friend and a great woman in this fragile world of ours. May you rest in peace dear one..."

"The world needs more people like Madeleine, whose instinct was to connect with others and build on what we share, rather than destroy lives and cities, like what’s happening in Ukraine today. Madeleine became very close to Colin Powell, her successor as secretary of state, who died last October"

"“Doubt can motivate you, so don’t be afraid of it. Confidence and doubt are at two ends of the scale, and you need both. They balance each other out.”"

"I arrived in Hollywood without having my nose fixed, my teeth capped, or my name changed. That is very gratifying to me."

"While I was waiting for them I made a few more phone calls, one to Barbra Streisand, whom I haven't seen since my election. I met her in a restaurant during the campaign when she came up to me and said she had a young son and wanted to do something for peace. She gave a fund-raising event for me in her new house in Manhattan, did a show and radio spots for me, and even came out on the streets and campaigned with me. “Ya betta win,” she used to say. She was great, and I really feel indebted to her."

"In the heyday of Barbra Streisand, it's hard to remember that every Jewish teenage girl of my generation whose nose "looked Jewish" longed for another chance."

"Why the fuck don't you shut up and just sing?"

"What is always overlooked is that although the poor want to be rich, it does not follow that they either like the rich or that they in any way want to emulate their characters which, in fact, they despise. Both the poor and the rich have always found precisely the same grounds on which to complain about each other. Each feels the other has no manners, is disloyal, corrupt, insensitive — and has never put in an honest day's work in its life."

"Elvis' quest led him through the study of all religions from Judaism to Buddhism and the teachings of theosophy with its belief in pantheistic evolution, reincarnation, the mystic the psychic, the spiritual, and the occult — in short, all the Aladdin lamps that lit up the 1960s. But before we roll about with laughter at the spectacle of this young many from the Bible Belt, raised on fundamentalism and comics, though apparently already well versed in polypharmacy — struggling to master the Wisdom of the East, we might pause a moment to note the names of George Bernard Shaw, Louis Lumière, Thomas Edison, Yeats, Havelock Ellis, Maeterlinck, the educator Rudolf Steiner, Krishnamurti, and Gandhi, all of whom had been influenced by or involved in theosophy at one time or another and would, not doubt, have welcomed Elvis with open arms as a fellow traveler in the belief that magic is inherent in us all."

"I'd always prided myself on how unlike my books were from each other in settings and subject matter. But not until late in my career did I realize that a single thread ran through them, that I'd used the same strategy to catch the reader's attention. It is the old Western movie gimmick: A Stranger Comes to Town. I am that Stranger. Together with the reader I will discover what's going on in that town whether it be Paris, London, New York, Sydney, Tupelo, Ferriday — or in a women's federal prison. And eventually we will make sense of it."

"Being with Hemingway meant joining in his elaborate game playing as a necessary mark of respect. Tennessee asked only that you be colorful and that you be honest. Looking back I still find the 50s the most exhilarating decade I've lived through. The only mistake I made then was in thinking it would go on forever. I keep reading it was all Dull Conformity and I wonder where those people were living. Not on my planet. The fact that we had won World War 2 and that we were alive led to a post-war cultural explosion."

"At some point in my life I realized I knew only celebrities, I didn't know any real people. I think it was a master stroke of Fate that in researching the greatest celebrity of them all, I would at last be meeting real people, finding them more extraordinary than celebrities; fascinated by them all and enjoying enduring friendships with some."

"I didn't know Elvis was alive until he was dead. But how many stories are like mine? Until his death August 16, 1977, it was possible to get through a day without hearing his name. Of course I remember all the early outrage he caused but believe me it was easy not to see any of his films. It doesn't mean that music has not always dominated my heart and mind. During the years barren of Elvis I did have my record player on constantly but it was playing folk, blues, and jazz. It was playing Al Jolson, Maurice Chevalier, Billie Holiday, Ethel Merman, and Noel Coward. The human voice raised in song has always been important to me so I include Miles Davis whose trumpet is such an important human voice. Then after his death in London in taxis, on radio and TV I heard nothing but Elvis records and that grabbed my attention."

"Sitting in the impressive high-ceilinged hall, an examiner had just given me the test on my eyes, which I failed again. She was talking to me but I was distracted by a blind man with dark glasses walking at some distance from me, his white cane clattering, echoing as it tap tapped away on the floor. What the examiner was repeating — and these are her exact words — was: "There is no cause and no cure for AMD yet." The dam burst. I began to cry, tears running down my face, sudden, unstoppable, embarrassing. In the restroom, I collapsed. My arms were shaking, my fingers stiffened, froze, and then tingled. My stomach was in an uproar. And I kept crying, knowing that I would never go back to seeing what I used to see. I felt hopeless, defenceless; worst of all, I felt timid. I was crying for my dead self. Up to now I'd been congratulating myself for bearing up so well. Now I realised this was because the ophthalmologists always referred to AMD as a disease. For me it meant there would be a cure. Now I knew there would be no new glasses, no medication, no surgery."

"Ken, the Tot of Destiny, had turned into the Marquis de Sade, and I in response had become a virago."

"It was a hot, peaceful, optimistic sort of day in September. It was around eleven in the morning, I remember, and I was drifting down the boulevard St. Michel, thoughts rising in my head like little puffs of smoke, when suddenly a voice bellowed into my ear: "Sally Jay Gorce! What the hell? Well, for Christ’s sake, can this really be our own little Sally Jay Gorce?” I felt a hand ruffling my hair and I swung around, furious at being so rudely awakened. Who should be standing there in front of me, in what I immediately spotted as the Left Bank uniform of the day, dark wool shirt and a pair of old Army suntans, but my old friend Larry Keevil. He was staring down at me with some alarm. I said hello to him and added that he had frightened me, to cover any bad-tempered expression that might have been lingering on my face, but he just kept on staring dumbly at me. "What have you been up to since … since … when the hell was it that I last saw you?” he asked finally. Curiously enough I remembered exactly."

"I’d made a vow when I got over here never to speak to anyone I’d ever known before. Yet here we were, two Americans who hadn’t really seen each other for years; here was someone from "home” who knew me when, if you like, and, instead of shambling back into the bushes like a startled rhino, I was absolutely thrilled at the whole idea. "I like it here, don’t you?” said Larry, indicating the café with a turn of his head. I had to admit I’d never been there before. He smiled quizzically. "You should come more often,” he said. "It’s practically the only nontourist trap to survive on the Left Bank. It’s real” he added. Real, I thought … whatever that meant."

"I suppose Larry’s "reality” in this case was based on the café’s internationality. But perhaps all cafés near a leading university have that authentic international atmosphere. At the table closest to us sat an ordinary-looking young girl with lank yellow hair and a gray-haired bespectacled middle-aged man. They had been conversing fiercely but quietly for some time now in a language I was not even able to identify. All at once I knew that I liked this place, too. Jammed in on all sides, with the goodish Tower of Babel working itself up to a frenzy around me, I felt safe and anonymous and, most of all, thankful we were going to be spared those devastating and shattering revelations one was always being treated to at the more English-speaking cafés like the Flore. And, as I said, I was very glad to have run into Larry."

"Slowly his eyes left my hair and traveled downwards. This time he really took in my outfit and then that Look that I’m always encountering; that special one composed in equal parts of amusement, astonishment and horror came over his face. I am not a moron and I can generally guess what causes this look. The trouble is, it’s always something different. I squirmed uncomfortably, feeling his eyes bearing down on my bare shoulders and breasts. "What the hell are you doing in the middle of the morning with an evening dress on?” he asked me finally. "Sorry about that,” I said quickly, "but it’s all I’ve got to wear. My laundry hasn’t come back yet.”"

"Maybe because I had been out very late the night before and was not able to put up my usual resistance, but it seemed to me, sitting there with the sound of his voice dying in my ears, that I could fall in love with him. And then, as unexpected as a hidden step, I felt myself actually stumble and fall. And there it was, I was in love with him! As simple as that. He was the first real person I’d ever been in love with. I couldn’t get over it. What I was trying to figure out was why I had never been in love with him before. I mean I’d had plenty of chance to. I’d seen him almost daily that summer in Maine two years ago when we were both in a Summer Stock company. … He was always rather nice to me in his insolent way, but there was also, I now remembered with a passing pang, an utterly ravishing girl, a model, the absolute epitome of glamour, called Lila. She used to come up at week ends to see him. Then I heard from someone that he’d quit college the next winter and gone abroad to become a genius. I’d met him again when I first landed in Paris. He’d been very nice, bought me a drink, taken down my telephone number and never called me. You’re a dead duck now, I told myself, as I relaxed back into my coma. You’re gone. I looked at him, smiling idly. I tried to imagine what was going on in his mind."

"He put his hand over mine, the one with the dead cigarette crumbled in it, and gave me a wonderful smile. "Easy, child, easy. I’m only teasing you. Don’t think I disapprove for Christ’s sake. Live it up, I say. Don’t say no to life, Gorce, you’re only young once.” We were on last name terms, Keevil and I."

"My thoughts were chasing each other all over the place, but nothing seemed to sort itself out. Advice, I thought. Ask his advice. On love? Finance? Career? Better stick to love, I decided, it’s what’s on your mind anyway. And with that my mind went blank."

"The sun shone on: the shade of the awning vanished in the hot, white, shadowless midday. In that blaze of heat I was loving Paris as never before. And there sitting opposite me, stretching himself luxuriously in the sun, his eyes lazily examining his half-empty drink, was Larry, the one I loved the best … sensationally uninterested."

"I stumbled across the Champs Élysées . I know it seems crazy to say, but before I actually stepped onto it (at what turned out to be the Étoile ) I had not even been aware of its existence. No, I swear it. I’d heard the words "Champs Élysées," of course, but I thought it was a park or something. I mean that’s what it sounds like, doesn’t it? All at once I found myself standing there gazing down that enchanted boulevard in the blue, blue evening. Everything seemed to fall into place. Here was all the gaiety and glory and sparkle I knew was going to be life if I could just grasp it. I began floating down those Elysian Fields three inches off the ground, as easily as a Cocteau character floats through Hell. Luxury and order seemed to be shining from every street lamp along the Avenue; shining from every window of its toyshops and dress-shops and carshops; shining from its cafés and cinemas and theaters; from its bonbonneries and parfumeries and nighteries.… Talk about seeing Eternity in a Grain of Sand and Heaven in a Wild Flower; I really think I was having some sort of mystic revelation then. The whole thing seemed like a memory from the womb. It seemed to have been waiting there for me. For some people history is a Beach or a Tower or a Graveyard. For me it was this giant primordial Toyshop with all its windows gloriously ablaze. It contained everything I’ve ever wanted that money can buy. It was an enormous Christmas present wrapped in silver and blue tissue paper tied with satin ribbons and bells. Inside would be something to adorn, to amuse, and to dazzle me forever. It was my present for being alive."

"Judy lived in my hotel. She was just seventeen, and what she was doing in Paris was supposedly chaperoning her younger brother, a fully fledged concert pianist of fifteen, who was studying there with one of the leading teachers. In view of their combined and startling innocence, however, this was a rather useless arrangement. Their last name was Galache, and they were the issue with which the highly unlikely union of a Quaker woman from Philadelphia and a dreadfully dashing Spaniard (now, alas, dead) had been blessed. Naturally their upbringing, up to this point, had been strict and very sheltered. … Judy was so different from me that it was really ludicrous. Whereas I was hell-bent for living, she was content, at least for the time being, to leave all that to others. Just as long as she could hear all about it. She really was funny about this. Folded every which way on the floor, looking like Bambi — all eyes and legs and no chin — she would listen for ages and ages with rapt attention to absolutely any drivel that you happened to be talking. It was unbelievable."

"Ridiculous as the idea may have been for her bluestocking mother to send brother and sister over alone like this, the fact was that Judy was protected as much by her curiosity as by her innocence. And then there was this other thing about her, too. You know all that razzle-dazzle about people being born in Original Sin and all that rot? Well, maybe it’s rot and maybe it isn’t. I mean I wouldn’t slit my throat from ear to ear, just because I’d found out for sure that most people are. But she wasn’t. That was the thing. She simply wasn’t. I’m positive of that."

"There are, I know (it was in our philosophy course in college), at least a hundred different reasons why some particular event takes place. So I thrashed about again trying to find some other truth and in the instant that it flashed through my head, I think I got as close to my raison d’etre as I ever have."

"I mean, the question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again night after night, but God knows the answer to that is, don’t we all anyway; might as well get paid for it."

"I look back in wonder at The Dud Avocado: in wonder at its initial reception and at the many times it’s been reissued — for years it was even republished alongside of every new book of mine that came out. I look back in wonder at the 1950s. The dull conformity of those years as they are generally imagined is something I don’t recognize. I look back in wonder at London in particular, where whole areas destroyed during the Second World War still lay in rubble. But London was in the midst of a renaissance for artists. In literature and playwriting the Angry Young Men were making their splash and new young actors like Richard Burton, Peter O Toole, Albert Finney, and Peter Finch were coming into their own. London was an orderly place where it was safe to take risks. Optimism was the rule of the day and I was there."

"In London, aside from bit parts, I was unlucky in my career but I was lucky in love. There was a theatrical club much frequented by all the young lions on their way up. They all gathered to eat inexpensively and be made blissful by the lethal house cider. It was there I met Ken Tynan, recently down from Oxford, and already the enfant terrible of Britain’s drama critics. Mutually magnetized, we married three months later. I sent a wire to my parents in New York: "Have married Englishman. Letter follows." I was madly in love with him and stepped happily into the Wonderland of his fame."

"Halfway through writing the book, I still had no title. It came wonderfully into being when I complimented my host at a party on his flourishing avocado plant. I said, I’d kept trying and failing with my own avocado pits. Someone said, what you’ve got is a dud avocado, and Ken said, that’s a good title for a novel. I thought, this title is mine, and it was. Ken and I had the same agent, and for a publisher we decided on Victor Gollancz, who was so good with first novels. Wonderfully, he accepted it, but with several caveats. He didn’t like the title. It sounded like a cookbook. He also wanted me to write under my married name. I said no to both. He accepted. He decided it needed a subtitle, "La Vie Amoureuse of Sally Jay in Paris." I said, Oh no, no! He said, this was the first time in his experience that an unknown writer had complained about a book cover. However, he did put on the book’s jacket that the subtitle was the publisher’s. Ken read it in proof and said, "You’ve got a thumping great best-seller here." Curiously, the first thing I felt was relief. I believed him. No one could predict how a play or novel would be received by the public like Ken could. And only then was I set free to let excitement take hold of me."

"The reviews were excellent and the book quickly went into a second printing. Then one night Ken came home and threw a copy of the book out the window. "You weren’t a writer when I married you, you were an actress," he said angrily. Obviously his colleagues had been riding him because of the attention I was receiving. I was shattered. The next day, he said, "I’ve been rereading your book. There’s love on every page." And then he gave me a beautiful red leather-bound copy of it with the inscription: "From the Critic to the Author." Looking at it I felt a pang. I wondered if it was his admission of what I’d done that he had not. To my wonder and, it appeared, his annoyance, the book wouldn’t go away."

"The Big Personalities weighed in. Soon after its publication Irwin Shaw wrote to me praising it. Terry Southern, calling me "Miss Smarts," said I was "a perfect darling." Gore Vidal phoned one morning saying, "You’ve got the one thing a writer needs: You’ve got your own voice. Now go." Ernest Hemingway said to me, "I liked your book. I liked the way your characters all speak differently." And then added, "My characters all sound the same because I never listen." All this, and heaven too. Laurence Olivier told me that now that my book was making a lot of money we could elope and I could support us. The Financial Times ran an item which read, "Such and such stock: No dud avocado." Groucho Marx wrote me, "I had to tell someone how much I enjoyed The Dud Avocado.… If this was actually your life, I don’t know how the hell you got through it." When people ask me how autobiographical the book is I say, all the impulsive, outrageous things my heroine does, I did. All the sensible things she did, I made up."

"My success took another road. I complained to Rod Steiger, "The book’s hardly been out and everyone wants to know what I’m going to write next. I mean, don’t I get to rest on my laurels?" In fact I had no idea of writing a second novel. "No," said Rod, answering my question. "Succeeding only means you get another chance to try to do it again." I thought about it, and then Ken said to me, "If you write another book, I’ll divorce you." I sat down and started my second novel and wondered that I knew its beginning and its end. I put it aside to write a play which went on in London.… I went back to my novel and finished it. It was published to good reviews but now there were a couple of stinkers. I tore them up and flushed them down the toilet. I’d become a writer. In 1964 Ken and I got divorced. Well, we did bad things to each other. Now, some three decades later, I look back in gratitude at him: I look back in wonder."

"I don't make the habit of writing to married women, especially if the husband is a dramatic critic, but I had to tell someone (and it might as well be you since you're the author) how much I enjoyed The Dud Avocado. It made me laugh, scream and guffaw (which incidentally is a great name for a law firm). If this was actually your life, I don't know how on earth you got through it."

"It is the destiny of some good novels to be perpetually rediscovered, and Elaine Dundy’s The Dud Avocado, I fear, is one of them … it bobs to the surface every decade or so, at which time somebody writes an essay about how good it is and somebody else clamors for it to be returned to print, followed in short order by the usual slow retreat into the shadows. In a better-regulated society, of course, the authors of such books would be properly esteemed, and on rare occasions one of them does contrive to clamber into the pantheon … but in the normal course of things, such triumphs are as rare as an honest stump speech. The Dud Avocado is further handicapped by being funny. Americans like comedy but don’t trust it, a fact proved each year when the Oscars are handed out: our national motto seems to be Lord Byron’s "Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter/Sermons and soda-water the day after." To be sure, The Dud Avocado is perfectly serious, but it preaches no sermons, and what it has to say about life must be read between the punch lines. That was what kept Powell under wraps for so long — nobody thought that a writer so amusing could really be any good, especially if she was also a woman — and it has been working against Elaine Dundy ever since she published The Dud Avocado, her first novel, in 1958."

"Her life among the lions on both sides of the Atlantic is not only witty but wise as she brings into focus one husband Kenneth Tynan, one Orson Welles, the one and only Elvis Presley, and not least of all, the lioness herself, surviving all."

"I feel the popular music of a certain time really tells you a lot about what life was like in that period."

"I disgust wearing clothing. I don't have any qualms about being naked on screen. I know it's being shot by a wonderful cinematographer, so why would I fret? If it was for Playboy, I'd be worried."

"I think it’s a good reality check to grow up in New York, because every day you’re exposed to people from all parts of the world, people that don’t have any money, people who live on the street, rich people — especially if you’re not sheltered."

"I feel like you kind of have to live life to its fullest in order to be a good actor. Draw on experiences. The more experiences the better, and I really have had a lot of experiences in life, even at my young age."

"For me there’s no good or bad, as long as I’m feeling everything to the greatest degree, whether it’s sadness or happiness."

"I love the fact that the present is the only real reality we have."

"I want to make it clear to England, I am not a party girl."

"I'm not a model. Whenever I do a photo shoot I like to create a story."

"I'm just one of the few American actresses that are willing to be nude. And I feel in order to be a great actress you need to be naked in all ways. Emotionally and … whatever."

"Paz is Genghis Khan meets Marie Antoinette"

"Paz de la Huerta has not risen to the status of It girl by chance. She has perfected the art of revealing her assets in a cheeky way at the opportune moment."

"It takes three things to make it in this business: the tenacity of a bulldog, the hide of a rhinoceros and a good home to come home to."

"The theatre was created to tell people the truth about life and the social situation."

"In your choices lies your talent."

"Acting requires a creative and compassionate attitude. It must aim to lift life up to a higher level of meaning and not tear it down or demean it. The actor's search is a generous quest for that larger meaning. That's why acting is never to be done passively."

"The teacher has to inspire, to agitate. You cannot teach acting. You can only stimulate what's already there."

"Your talent is in your imagination. The rest is lice."

"You must get away from the real thing because the real thing will limit your acting and cripple you. To think of your own mother's death each time you want to cry onstage is schizophrenic and sick."

"Use your creative imagination to create a past that belongs to your character. I don't want you to be stuck with your own life. It's too little."

"You can't be boring. Life is boring. The weather is boring. Actors must not be boring."

"Get a stage tone, darling, an energy. Never go on stage without your motor running."

"Stella is theatrical royalty who instills in her students a sense of the nobility of acting. She dares her students to act, to lift their bodies and their voices, to be larger than themselves, to love language and ideas."

"Stella Adler was much more than a teacher of acting. Through her work she imparts the most valuable kind of information - how to discover the nature of our own emotional mechanics and therefore those of others. She never lent herself to vulgar exploitations, as some other well-known so-called "methods" of acting have done. As a result, her contributions to the theatrical culture have remained largely unknown, unrecognized, and unappreciated."

"What an extraordinary combination was Stella Adler - a goddess of full of magic and mystery, a child full of innocence and vulnerability."

"[Adler] established the value of the actor putting himself in the place of the character rather than vice versa … More than anyone else, Stella Adler brought into public awareness all the close careful attention to text and analysis Stanislavski endorsed."

"I want to be a balanced artist ... this is all years of me learning me and my style, and deciding to do something different that would get everyone's attention."

"I love that people never know what Nicki they are going to get on a particular song. I like bringing out a different side."

"Your victory is right around the corner. Never give up."

"You wanna know what scares people? Success. When you don’t make moves and you don’t climb up the ladder, everybody loves you because you’re not competition."

"It's a great feeling to not box yourself into anyone’s limitations or ideas or judgments."

"Little girls can aspire to be anything, and that’s all I want people to see. Whether you follow Nicki Minaj's blueprint or not, just don’t be afraid to experiment and don’t allow people to knock your hustle just ’cause it ain’t something that you’re used to seeing. ... I like that I'm there because it gives little girls in Southside Jamaica, Queens, or South Africa or Brazil a moment to say, ‘Oh wait, I can be a female rapper!’ Yes, you really can."

"Women need to have a perspective. If we’re out here saying that we’re so confident, and we’re so this and so that, but we don’t even trust ourselves to write down our own thoughts and spit it on a beat? It just doesn’t add up."

"Dear first borns, especially daughters. God is your strength. That is all."

"Oh my gosh, look at her butt Oh my gosh, look at her butt Oh my gosh, look at her butt (Look at her butt) Look at, look at, look at Look, at her butt."

"You could be the king, but watch the queen conquer."

"The only time you'll see me as a Democrat is when I play Sophia. In the real world I'm a Republican from head to toe."

"Age does not bring you wisdom, age brings you wrinkles."

"I think they look upon me as an old child, because I'm so little."

"Being tiny has been difficult for me in a business that regarded physicality as the most important part of your life."

"People assume that I'm wiser than I am because I'm somewhat successful. Age does not bring you wisdom, age brings you wrinkles. If you're dumb when you're young, you're going to be dumb when you're old."

"Too many of you, my friends, are dying. Now it's time for me to do my part and help you."

"I... was not too happy to suddenly take on this public role thrust upon me. They just assumed I was the Joan of Arc of the women's movement. And I wasn't at all. It put a lot of unnecessary pressure on me."

"Making lasting gifts for animals in our estate plans is perhaps the single most important thing we can do to ensure animals have the strongest possible voice for their protection."

"That town was stifling. Three of us got out. Me, John Barth and the guy who wrote "You Are My Sunshine." My dream was to become a very small blonde movie star like and those other women I saw up there on the screen during the Depression."

"I can't imagine working without an audience."

"PETA has a proven track record of success. Each victory PETA wins for the animals is a stepping stone upon which we build a more compassionate world for all beings - and we will never give up our fight until all animals are treated with respect and kindness."

"I suddenly realized that comedy, for me, was just being honest, and playing it for real. I've seen so many wonderful actors who turn into creatures from another planet when they're told they are supposed to be playing comedy. I... was not too happy to suddenly take on this public role thrust upon me. They just assumed I was the Joan of Arc of the women's movement. And I wasn't at all. It put a lot of unnecessary pressure on me. I'd never even been to Wrigley Field. I never even enjoyed baseball that much, but I loved being there, the crowd was lovely, and they all sang with me!"

"It was like the Beatles had arrived, you know. These four elderly ladies, and they were screaming for us-screaming for us. It was wonderful."

"You know, the way I'm accepted, I almost feel like Judy Garland, truly. It makes no sense to me because I don't think that I've been any more outspoken... Or maybe I have, I don't know. But everyone I know supports anything that has to do with raising money or with AIDS."

"I watch news programs and I love Comedy Central. I love The Daily Show-it's smarter than anything else. I also like The Critic and Celebrity Death Match and South Park. I love all of that."

"There were subjects we tackled that had never been even discussed, like I had an abortion. Nobody ever talked about that."

"I've been a Democrat my whole life. That's what makes Maude and Dorothy so believable, we have the same viewpoints on how our country should be handled."

"I'm not an actress who can create a character. I play me."

"Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you."

"My proximity to the sheep, cattle, and geese who are now my neighbors in the country is what has finally turned me into a vegetarian. I talk to these animals when I walk. Sometimes I am lucky enough to make physical contact with them, and as I look into their eyes I see not only the innocence, but also the clear fact that those eyes are no less complicated in their structure than my own. Don't we now have enough tasty things to eat from the garden and all the delicious ways to prepare them?"

"My grandfather once said, having watched me one entire afternoon, prancing and leaping and cavorting, "this child will either end up on stage or in jail." Fortunately, I took the easy route."

"I knew at a very early age what I wanted to do. Some people refer to it as indulging in my instincts and artistic bent. I call it just showing off, which was what I did from about three years of age on."

"Take chances, make mistakes. That's how you grow. Pain nourishes your courage. You have to fail in order to practice being brave."

"It may take a while, but there will probably come a time when we look back and say, "Good Lord, do you believe that in the twentieth century and early part of the twenty-first, people were still eating animals?""

"Whatever it is, it’s OK because it’s what it is. Don’t be looking for perfection. Don’t be short-tempered with yourself. And you’ll be a whole lot nicer to be around with everyone else."

"In real life, I'm just an actor. I play pretend. I tell stories."

"Your life is your story and the adventure ahead of you is the journey to fulfill your own purpose and potential."

"I realized that I don't have to be perfect. All I have to do is show up and enjoy the messy, imperfect and beautiful journey of my life. It's a trip more wonderful than I could have imagined."

"I'm the luckiest broad in Hollywood now. To be the lead actor on Scandal and to be in the highest-earning Tarantino movie-I don't get to ask for more."

"It's so nice to get flowers while you can still smell the fragrance."

"Don't be afraid to feel as angry or as loving as you can, because when you feel nothing, it's just death."

"I am not alone. I am free. I no longer have to be a credit, I don't have to be a symbol to anybody, I don't have to be a first to anybody. I don't have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I'd become. I'm me, and I'm like nobody else."

""Always be smarter than the people who hire you.“"

"I made a promise to myself to be kinder to other people."

"My friend, Miss Lena Horne"

"One of my fondest personal memories was Lena Horne and Mike Douglas. We were booked to do "Here's to My Lady" and a prolonged medley together on a Kraft Music Hall Special. I was so thrilled, I kept making mistakes in rehearsal just so we'd have to do it over again."

"There is not one female comic who was beautiful as a little girl."

"[Catchphrase:] Can we talk?"

"[Catchphrase:] Oh, grow up!"

"Why do wives have to spend so much time dusting, vacuuming, mopping, making beds, washing dishes, when you just have to do it all again six months later?"

"Before we make love, my husband takes a pain killer."

"I have so little sex appeal that my gynecologist calls me "sir.""

"I've had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware."

"My routines come out of total unhappiness. My audiences are my group therapy."

"Never floss with a stranger."

"It's been so long since I made love, I can't even remember who gets tied up."

"Two is company; three is fifty bucks."

"Anger is a symptom, a way of cloaking and expressing feelings too awful to experience directly—hurt, bitterness, grief and, most of all, fear."

"Looking fifty is great—if you're sixty."

"I'm Jewish. I don't work out. If God had wanted us to bend over, he would have put diamonds on the floor."

"A man can sleep around, no questions asked, but if a woman makes nineteen or twenty mistakes she's a tramp."

"My obstetrician was so dumb that when I gave birth he forgot to cut the cord. For a year that kid followed me everywhere. It was like having a dog on a leash."

"I succeeded by saying what everyone else is thinking."

"I knew I was an unwanted baby when I saw that my bath toys were a toaster and a radio."

"Don't tell your kids you had an easy birth or they won't respect you. For years I used to wake up my daughter and say, 'Melissa, you ripped me to shreds. Now go back to sleep.'"

"I wish I had a twin, so I could know what I'd look like without plastic surgery."

"My best birth control now is just to leave the lights on."

"You know you are getting old when work is a lot less fun and fun is a lot more work."

"People say money is not the key to happiness, but I've always figured if you have enough money you can get a key made."

"I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes—and six months later you have to start all over again."

"Don't follow any advice, no matter how good, until you feel as deeply in your spirit as you think in your mind that the counsel is wise."

"No one loved life, laughter and a good time more than Joan. We would have dinner and laugh and gossip and I always left the table smiling. She was a brassy, often outrageous and hilarious performer who made millions laugh. In private, she was the picture of elegance and class. I will miss her."

"I saw [the Vibe article], but I don't really comment on that because I know it's not true."

"When people ask me, I tell them, "Hey don't believe all that mess. We're close and people took it the wrong way.""

"It was a painful time for me and my family. That's why I'm proud to say I'm a strong person. I'm a survivor and I can handle anything. I'm very confident about that. I come from a very strong family and they are always there to protect me. If I need any help I'll just call on my mummy or daddy or my brother to whom I'm very close."

"I'm seventeen now so I've grown in a lot of ways, artistically and vocally."

"Honestly, there were negative things that were said in the past and that was one reason that I did feel it was best for me to move on. That was a rough period for me and my family, a very tumultuous time. But I'm a very strong person. I think it says a lot about me that I'm here today and I answer the questions."

"I knew at a very young age this was what I wanted to do. I started singing at six so I knew by the time I was eight."

"I breathe to perform, to entertain, I can’t imagine myself doing anything else. I’m just a really happy girl right now. I honestly love every aspect of this business. I really do. I feel very fulfilled and complete."

"There's a dark side to me that comes out in everything I do."

"I’ve always been mysterious. My mother and father always used to ask me, "What are you thinking, what’s going on?" There are times when I don’t understand myself, you know what I mean?"

"I have black-out shades in my apartment, I push a button, it’s totally dark. I think I’m a bit of a vampire in real life, and there are times when I just want to be myself. I wanna be alone."

"It is dark in my favorite dream. Someone is following me. I don't know why. I'm scared. Then suddenly I lift off. Far away. How do I feel? As if I am swimming in the air. Free. Weightless. Nobody can reach me. Nobody can touch me. It's a wonderful feeling."

"When I went to shoot the film I was very nervous. I kept telling myself, "This is it. This is what you've wanted, this is the real deal. Now you've gotta do your thing. You've gotta put all of you in this and hopefully they'll like you." And for people to say it's impressive and "You're so natural", I mean, it's the best feeling in the world. I feel like hard work, you know, payed off."

"I waited for the right project for the right time and it just came together."

"I was actually just blessed to be surrounded by so many wonderful veterans and people that I had great chemistry with and that were just open to me."

"Playing off of people that great was great for me."

"I love Eddie Murphy so I wanted to do a song on the soundtrack."

"I have a few childhood nicknames. One is "Babygirl". My father gave that to me when I was born. He said, "I have a beautiful baby girl" and that one stuck with me. A lot of people still call me "Babygirl"."

"I love baths. Absolutely love baths. I like to just draw a nice warm bath with a lot of bubbles, get a few sweets, maybe put them by the bath, put on really good music and chill."

"Don't like motorbikes. Don't like them, I've been on a few, even in a few videos and they scare me. They scare the hell out of me and you know in videos, course I've got "the cool face on" and cool breezing it, tough, glasses, but underneath I'm screaming."

"I feel like I'm really just getting started. I don't know what's going to happen in the next five or ten years."

"I'm the interpreter. I'm the one who takes your words and brings them to life. I was trained to sing and dance and laugh, and that's what I want to do."

"Always be true to yourself."

"Well, I think that the image is a part of me. I wear the baggy pants, the hats, the whole nine. And you know, I may add a little for the excitement and the intrigue in the videos, but my family has told me that little air of mystery that surrounds me is for real."

"I don't feel I made any sacrifices at all. I'm doing my best to juggle."

"I think it's important to take a break, you know, from the public eye for a while, and give people a chance to miss you. I want longevity. I don't want to get out there and run myself ragged and spread myself thin."

"There is a bit of acting involved when you get in front of a camera for a video. Even when you perform onstage, you're putting on a show."

"Keep working hard and you can get anything that you want."

"Aaliyah's loss is major, because she was one of R&B and urban music's brightest stars. She was an excellent singer, a talented performer, and a great actress, whose success had only just begun. There will be a huge gaping hole in urban music now that she's no longer with us."

"Aaliyah is an excellent role model, because she started her career in the public eye at age 15 with a gold album entitled Age Ain't Nothing but a Number. And then her second album, One in a Million went double platinum. She had the leading role in Romeo Must Die, which was a box office success. She's won numerous awards, several MTV music video awards, and aside from her professional successes, many of her lyrics are very inspirational and uplifting. She also carried herself in a very professional manner. She was well spoken. She was beautiful, but she didn't use her beauty to sell her music. She used her talent. Many young hip-hop fans greatly admire her."

"I don't know if Aaliyah's accident will change the way that celebrities fly, but I hope it will make people realize that life is very short, and that you have to appreciate everything each day. And when you are making decisions, to make sure that they are safe decisions and smart decisions. But there has been a long history of celebrities dying in plane crashes."

"I think that Aaliyah's death could definitely be compared to Selena's, because of her powerful music and lyrics, and her huge fan base. For urban music and hip hop, we also make the comparison to The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac."

"I think that Aaliyah's death will always leave a hole in urban music, and I think that people will always miss her, but I hope that the positive image that she represented will carry on, and that young people will still aspire to the greatness that she exuded."

"I watched her grow up, and, with the rest of the world, saw her achieve success with her very special and unique talents. From an early age, I knew she had enormous talents, an intrinsic gift."

"She had a refreshing outlook for one so young, with true respect for her art and for her elders. She brought joy to my heart, and I felt blessed to encourage and support her professionally and personally as she strove for each new goal."

"(Aaliyah) was like my seventh daughter. She had so much grace. That's why I just thought her so special — that such a young person always approached her creativity with humility and her success with such grace."

"She was true to who she was and she didn't seem to care about it. The core of her art to me is heavily, heavily urban based. When an artist's music is so urban based, sometimes people like to take risks with artists like that. When you think about it, it really is pop, it really is cultural and that's the one thing that I thought was cool about her music. It never felt like she was trying to reach across or do anything more than just keep that cool, soulful, heavy urban core about it. It wasn't like she was trying to be anything more than who she was. I really respect that and I appreciate that."

"Her star had just begun to shine so brightly. Though she was ours for only a short time, what a time it was. I love Aaliyah, and I will miss her for the rest of my life."

"I ain’t discrediting Aaliyah in any kind of way, but you know how sometimes when people die… You know how somebody’s an asshole their whole life, but when you go to their funeral it’s like, “This guy is the greatest man that ever walked this Earth.”"

"Because she passed nobody’s good enough to be next to her. If she was still alive, then everybody would be saying, “Oh you’re trying to be like Beyoncé.” But now that she’s passed, everybody’s like, “Nobody can be like her.” That’s just how it is, and that’s how people are."

"There will never be another Aaliyah, period, point blank. Aaliyah is Aaliyah, her legacy will live forever. So what Tim basically was saying is that Aaliyah gave him confirmation that this is going to be something."

"I'm the last person he called that night. I wonder, how many girls didn't answer before he got to fat freshman me? Am I in his phone as Schumer? Probably. But I was here, and I wanted to be held and touched and felt desired, despite everything. I wanted to be with him. I imagined us on campus together, holding hands, proving, "Look! I am lovable! And this cool older guy likes me!" I can't be the troll doll I'm afraid I've become."

"I'm probably like 160 pounds right now, and I can catch a dick whenever I want. Like, that's the truth. It's not a problem. It's not a problem."

"I can’t pretend to have worked my way up through adversity. I need the money not for food like other people, but to prove that I’m worth something. Jaws freed me to discover that a successful movie didn’t make a damn bit of difference to my life."

"Dr. King said he had a dream that WE would get to the promised land.Well, we’re here. We just have to live it. Through hard work and service to our fellow man, we can have it. In America, there is enough to go around."

"God spoke to me and God told me, "Keep your son,” And I did and he saved my life. My son saved my life. Had I not had my son, I would probably be dead right now."

"I thought, 'This is just too terrifying. I've never seen anything like that before.' I hadn't been allowed to watch horror movies before that. I was so traumatized I literally could not sleep for weeks, and it changed my physical appearance; I lost like 10 pounds. My teachers got so concerned they called my mother, 'Is there something going on – is she being abused at home?' My mother found a picture of Robert Englund the actor, and Robert Englund in the Freddy Krueger make-up, and pasted them up near my bedside table. So, every night when I'd go to sleep, literally for like a year, I'd have to look at it and think, 'It's just a movie, it's just a movie, it's not real.' I remember thinking that I was going to grow up one day and be an actress, and never make a movie that scares little kids."

"I go back and forth between [being a vegan and not being a vegan]. I try lots of different things. I really feel that you need to kind of listen to your body and what your body is telling you to eat. So I was a vegan for about two years. … Well, everything with being vegan and vegetarian is a really big commitment. You have to do what you feel is best and what you believe in and what your body is telling you that it needs. I really think everyone should do what’s best for them, and what’s best for me may not be best for someone else. But like I said, you just have to do what makes you feel good."

"It's so important, so comforting, to have lampposts in this world who can light the way."

"Uniqueness is what makes you the most beautiful."

"Find something you’re passionate about and you know, do something."

"Nobody should be entirely defined by one thing"

"If you can spend a little time with these creatures, you can connect them again to animals that you love, which I think helps everybody remember the importance of treating them humanely and with dignity. These are, you know, the lucky animals that have fallen off the backs of trucks and stuff. If you want to help the environment, go vegetarian."

"I've been an animal lover my whole life and I consider myself environmentalist, and often the two subjects come together."

"The world has so much suffering in it already—choosing to be vegetarian is one thing you can do to reduce the suffering on a daily basis."

"I believe we should extend our care and concern to all living creatures with whom we share this planet. ... [Animals] give me a window into a world that is different from our own, but every bit as meaningful. ... I can’t imagine what life would be like without animals. They bring me happiness and a sense of calm and peace."

"ICE is a terrorist organization, and it's leader is Donald Trump."

"ICE has strayed so far from its mission. It's supposed to be here to keep Americans safe, but what it's turned into is frankly a terrorist organization of its own that is terrorizing people that are coming to this country."

"Survivors, I believe you. Because I am you. #BelieveSurivors #StopKavanaugh #timesup ✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽"

"You are not weak. You are brave. One of the bravest I know. Speaking your truth, a person living at the intersection of multiple identities, unapologetically, takes courage. I love you"

"The challenge from the beginning was just the diversity and ‘We don’t really know what to do with you’ and ‘There’s not going to be a lot of work for you."

"The lack of predictability with television is something that’s constantly changing what your perception of who you think your character is…"

"Growing up as somebody from another country, really, not what you see on television, I never saw myself in the forefront, ever. We were always in the background."

"You can't allow fear to take over your life. If you do, you'll look back and you'll have regrets. I learned this a long time ago, because I think "my God, my parents came over from another country". It would be really scary for me to move to China and leave everything behind. But I have to remember that fear is something everyone feels and it's natural. You might feel fear 10 times a day in your life, and you have to try to understand it…"

"Everyone has a different format for how they want to reveal what they are thinking, or what they are seeing, to the audience…I just had to let go of the audience and just started thinking about what I wanted to see."

"I think that art helps evaluate some of the psychology of yourself as a child, and to illuminate some things you may never have understood."

"I realized it had everything to do with how I grew up and the interaction I had with my father, that he was somewhat abusive…That made me understand that your body retains not just physical damage, but emotional perforations."

"[All of the characters] are composites. You’re looking at what could be. There’s theatrical truth to it, which is: maybe this isn’t verbatim, but it’s within the realm of possibility…"

"In theatre, people do that all the time. There’s always going to be somebody who wants their own sense of justice, especially with this. They have their own sense of justice that explains if someone else’s is true. Speak for me, speak to me. I want you to tell me who did what. We don’t know who did what within those individual moments. Who was right? Who was wrong? Whatever that means. It’s not, for lack of a better term, that black and white."

"The outsiders. I’m interested in the people that don’t necessarily fit and the thing that gives you permission to be uncomfortable. I like dark work because you’re forced to learn about certain things…"

"If you are looking for a sense of justice, that’s not what I’m doing. I’m telling many truths. I don’t have to represent."

"I want to represent queerness and mujerness in the conversation. I worry that my poor Spanish may be off-putting to some cohorts. I just talk so damn slow in any language. I also want to represent slow talkers—and mimes."

"My audience is a mix of people, very San Francisco progressive, gay straight, Latino, people of color, white folks, and women. What I’ve learned is you can’t get everybody. I don’t want to compromise who I am. I love anyone who buys a ticket to my show."

"If I talk about my body the way the men do, that’s not okay with the audience. I was at a comedy show where there was this cool lesbian couple in the audience, really stylish, and one of them had to leave. She was crying sitting there listening to all the jokes about Subarus and mullet haircuts. I thought: I am going to get back at them. I want a man to look at this show and realize that their junk is no more appealing than women’s junk. I want them to look at junk."

"I tend to channel my characters and their needs first—that leads to dramatic situations—and then…I start writing and barf out pages. Next, I read what I have and find a glimmer of plot in there. Then I do it all over again with the plot driving the characters. You have to write a lot and throw out a lot and have fun with it."

"…My pieces come from people and feelings and life rather than research. During my life, I’m listening and feeling, and I’m also calibrating the emotions in the room and asking people about their lives, and from there I go into creating. I wouldn’t be able to do research and then create a piece. It would be so flat. It would be filled with ideas and not emotion. Mine is more of an emotional based work."

"…New York. Invisible New Yorkers. Folks that aren’t talked about in the theatre as much. Love. Instead of love it’s more like service. Service to one another. Death always seems to follow every show I do. It’s really life and death…"

"As an American, I always want to create work that reminds the world that people of colour have been great contributors to American history, culture, and tradition and that our stories exist and matter."

"…What’s different on TV and film is that you get to grow into it even in the scene. Because you do various takes and you start with one idea, and you work on it – but the one thing that you never know is how it’s going to affect that other person’s energy. It’s been very organic for the both of us in terms of how the dynamic between the two characters has developed."

"…Everything comes in waves and sometimes I do feel like there’s a lot more coming than there used to be, but the business itself has changed. In some ways the cult of celebrity has taken over rather than looking for really talented actors. And that’s a completely different trend that completely impacts who you watch and what types of show you’re seeing…"

"If I take my origin story as a first generation Latina straddling between 'La Isla' [the island, referring to Puerto Rico] and New York, 'Spider-Verse' shows me the connective tissue that makes me proud of my culture and roots in both places."

"I think your origin is important, not only because it defines who you are, but also because it shows what you have in common with others."

"Somehow, acting brings out parts of your personality that maybe you didn’t know were there, or the character brings out some little part of you that has been dormant for your whole life, you know? And then when you get the chance to play these characters, some-times things come out of you that are quite surprising and that you don’t even know are inside of you. It’s an amazing thing to experience that."

"I love simple things, I’m not really that turned on by the grandiosity of celebrity and fame. I love beautiful things... and I so appreciate all of the amazing experiences I get to have, and the finer things in life. But the things that really make me happy and re-ally touch my heart are just incredibly simple. I think I’ve always been that way my whole life."

"I never really liked too much attention, which can be good and bad, if someone gives me a compliment it just goes in one ear and out the other, and if someone says something really horrible it’s the same. I just learned not to value my self-esteem and who I am as a person on the popularity of a film or how famous I am at the time. I guess I had the perspective of how it can be there one time and not another. And life is the most exciting part, really living, you know?"

"I see and appreciate beauty in my weird little way. It’s easy to buy presents or make romantic gestures, but the more simple things demonstrate you really know someone – that’s what I find sexy and romantic. Being romantic is knowing what makes the person you love happy."

"I love being engaged, but I don’t really have a desire to get married, I always felt like marriage should be more of a reward... For surviving your relationship... I feel everyone’s got it backwards"

"As a great fan of the work of Mark Twain, I was so sorry when I recently learned he was dead. My thoughts and prayers go out to the whole Twain family. Especially the wonderful Shania."

"I grew up here in Washington, D.C., back during the quaint, old-fashioned "Rule of Law" period."

"Laughter is a basic human need, along with love, and food, and an HBO subscription."

"Everybody needs laughs, so the fact that I've had the opportunity to make people laugh for a living is one of the many blessings that I have received in my life."

"Julia Louis-Dreyfus, as far as I was concerned, was the key to the success of the show."

"I was not acting. I couldn't! I thought she was funny, charming, beautiful, intelligent every single second I ever spent with her, onstage and off. Bingo! No acting required."

"Whenever I quit porn, I'll be starting at square one again—I am going to be where all my friends were ten years ago. I don't know if I want to have kids, so that is a huge issue right now in my mind, too..."

"I don’t like anything that makes fun of Asian culture or makes it look dumb. It’s such a thin line to walk and everyone draws that line someplace different. It’s such a subjective thing."

"I was at a breaking point … and my body was telling me that I needed to change. Now. I decided to “go raw” cold turkey, and after experiencing the life-altering benefits within the first week, I haven’t looked back since. Becoming a raw foodist not only saved my life, but it has also led me to discover my true passion—helping other people better understand their bodies and minds and improve their own health and quality of life. For the first time in years I was eating sufficient amounts of food and, more importantly, the right kinds. It took a few months to nourish my body back fully, but over time I began to feel vibrant again, and this reflected in every area of my life—physical, mental, professional, and emotional. I no longer had sinus infections or trouble falling asleep or waking up. My headaches were gone, along with my addiction to antacid pills. In short, my body started to heal itself and function like a well-oiled machine. From close friends to new acquaintances, people around me took notice and commented on how radiant and healthy I looked. I may have been a top model, but I had never heard these sorts of compliments before. And it felt great."

"My life changed when I started eating raw and unprocessed foods. I went from being a tired and sick model who was taking medicine for everything, to a vibrant self-confident woman who ate more than she had in years. Through a raw diet … I became more conscious of what I was putting in my body every day, at every meal, even when I was snacking. Going raw and eating real food helped me realize that food is the fuel my body needs to function at its optimal level—not something to help me cope with my emotions or to simply make me feel full. When I took time to learn about the food I was consuming and the role that diet played in my overall health, I realized its power. Food, more than anything else, has the ability to heal and mend our bodies. For the first time in my life, I was able to form a different relationship with food—one that focused on the positive aspects of eating foods that gave me energy, boosted my mood, soothed my ailments, and helped me feel alive. What you eat impacts every part of your life. If you change your food, you change your life."

"When I was modeling, food was either my best friend or my worst enemy. I would not eat all day for fear of gaining weight, and then, if something went well, I would reward myself with brownies. I needed the sugar to keep me going. I was eating based on my emotions and always feeling guilty. Going raw and educating myself about food helped me change this mind-set. I learned that food is fuel and what we choose affects everything: our bodies, minds, moods, job performance, and relationships—even our sex lives. As they say in Silicon Valley: garbage in, garbage out. In order to fuel myself properly I needed to eat food in its real and natural state. That meant no more garbage in—no more artificial ingredients or processed foods. You really are what you eat. We’ve all heard this phrase before, but it doesn’t always resonate. Why not? It’s so simple."

"I think when you begin to think of yourself as having achieved something, then there's nothing left for you to work towards. I want to believe that there is a mountain so high that I will spend my entire life striving to reach the top of it."

"My parents began their married life together in a Bronx tenement before later relocating to Manhattan's East Side. The year after they wed, they welcomed my brother, Melrose, a name my father had loved since the day he spotted it on a street sign in the Bronx. Six days before Christmas in 1924, I arrived with my thumb poked in my mouth and nary a strand of hair. A year and a half later, my sister, Emily, came along to complete our family, crossing the "T" on the Tyson five."

"The truth is, I've always been quietly proud of my real age. Why wouldn't I want to celebrate every crease in my brow, all that hard-earned wisdom that lives between the folds? If my first manager, Warren Coleman, hadn't been so insistent that I age myself down—he feared, and perhaps rightfully so, that an industry rife with female age discrimination would count me out of a lot of roles—I may have just omitted my age, rather than changing it. It's nobody's business. But when the Kennedy Center honor came around, I felt it was important to set the public record straight. Months before I learned I was to receive the award, I'd celebrated my ninetieth birthday. During the press blitzkrieg surrounding the Kennedy Center ceremony, I spoke that number aloud with nary a quake in my voice. "When were you born?" one reporter asked me. "December 19, 1924," I answered. For me, it was not a matter to be ashamed of. It was a journey to delight in."

"…it happened because I learned that I could speak through other people. I was a very shy child. I was an observer. I would sit and observe and listen and watch people's actions in order to understand what they were. I wanted to know what prompted them to say and do the things that they did. I sucked my fingers for 12 years. I never spoke ... but I was a great observer."

"…I was doing a promotion for Sounder. And after the film was completed, this journalist said that he discovered a bit of bigotry in himself. But he realized that this Black boy ... [actor] Kevin Hooks calls his father Daddy. And when I asked why, he said, "That's what my son calls me." And I tell you, I was so stunned. It took me a few minutes to catch my breath in order to question whether this man thought that we were human. You know, why can't my son call his Black father Daddy, as his sons called him. And it was at that time that I decided I could not afford the luxury of just being an actress. There were certain issues I had to address and I would use my career as my platform."

"I wish people knew the Miles Davis that I knew. Really. Because you can walk into a bookstore and you see reams of books about Miles Davis. And few people who wrote those books know him. The Miles Davis that I know and knew is not the Miles Davis that you'll read about in those books. I had the good fortune to be close enough to him to have him reveal himself to me the first moment we met. It is the Miles Davis that kept me with him as long as it did. Not only was he brilliantly talented, he was brilliantly sensitive. And that is the Miles Davis that people ... don't know that he was trying to protect."

"Challenges make you discover things about yourself you never really knew. They are what make the instrument stretch what make you go beyond the norm"

"Just stick with it. Just stick with it. There's always a reason why you keep going in the direction you chose to go in."

"To thine on self be true." "Do that, and you’ll have no regrets."

"I think the key to a great romcom is to not fight against the genre,” she explains. “The trend more recently has been to apologise, or be snarky, so it’s an anti-romcom.” Out comes that wide smile. “Just lean in and embrace the fact it’s a love story and it’s funny and it’s light. It can still be uber-smart and deal with zeitgeist issues."

"Cruelty in cinema can give us perspective and insight but I’m not a fan of horror as an adrenaline rush or a desensitizing mechanism, I prefer horror movies that elucidate the human condition."

"I prefer to be surprised. I’m a shape-shifter and a yogi who loves well crafted indie films with deep themes, but lately my main requirement is that a film be released. It’s disheartening to invest time and love into a good film with a limited release. Therefore, the more mainstream projects are a better gamble."

"I of course love doing is film and theater, so I really like that, it’s a shorter term commitment, it’s an opportunity to explore different actors and different characters and also to work with better and better artists. More and more artists at the top of the, at the cream of the crop and learn from them. So, that’s a joy. That you can be in that company and then now, it’s helping younger or not necessarily younger, but newer artists in film and independent film, and certainly being the established actor, with people making their Broadway debut, it is great"

"I never never thought it would be like this. … Chemically I'm not put together for anything like this. I'm not sexy. I honestly thought if I did steady, sensible work that maybe when I was 30 or 35 I would get approval as a good actress."

"I think it's lovely to have one part for which you're known. Some actors work all their lives and never achieve this. But acting is what I do; it's not what I am. And I have always had a varied acting career and a very full life beyond my acting endeavors."

"The dogs were always totally concentrated on their trainers. … They were not fed before filming, and the trainers would stand on either side of the set and hold up a piece of meat to make Lassie look to the right or left."

"I did Lassie for six years and I never had anybody come up to me and say, "It made me want to be a farmer.""

"When people come up to me and say, "Well, sure wish we had wonderful American shows like that the way we used to in the '50s," I say: "Let me tell you who wrote those scripts." … Yes, they were good Americans, and they were in jail."

"I must quote Dan Rather … "I can control my reputation, but not my image because my image is how you see me" … I love rock 'n' roll and going to concerts. I have driven army tanks and flown in hot air balloons and I go plane gliding-the ones with no motors. I do lots of things that don't go hand-in-hand with my image."

"I was over the moon – pun intended. … I have been told that my contribution inspired many astronauts to pursue a career in space science and exploration … it is lovely to know that I touched so many people by doing things that interested me!"

"I loved my craft and my cast members. … I never forgot that it is all make-believe."

"I have been a music fan forever … The Beatles, Stones, Chicago, David Bowie, Huey Lewis and the News, Tina Turner. … We threw a Halloween party at my home in the late '60s, and I hired a band called Hour Glass … They were fantastic. Truly talented guitars, keyboards and vocals … then they changed their name to the Allman Brothers Band."

"June Lockhart has burst on Broadway with the suddenness of an unpredicted comet."

"Goodbye to the brilliant June Lockhart … A one of a kind, talented, nurturing, adventurous, and non compromising Lady. She did it her way. … June will always be one of my very favorite moms … 100 years here. Wow! R.I.P. 👍🏼✌️❤️🙏🏻"

"There's a lot that we keep inside that's starts very early for most us, if you look at kids, kids are for the most part very expressive, they yell, they scream, they cry, they say whatever they feel, they like to play, they like to pretend, they get mad, they cry easily, and it's not about being about that again, but it's that kind of freedom, that kind of spontaneity that often we loose early on because we're shut down by experiences that hurt, by people who can't stand that kind of intensity that children have and try to get them to shut up and behave."

"I like to think of smiling as a cause not an effect. Smile all the time."

"New York City was my first introduction to America. It was a beautiful welcome because in the streets I saw people of all colors, wearing different outfits, clearly from different parts of the world. While I was still feeling like a foreigner, an immigrant, an outsider, there were so many people I could point to even as a young child who looked completely different, too."

"The best way to improve matters in your own actions is to first understand and accept the reasons for systemic prejudice and how that discrimination manifests in people’s lives over generations. Then you have to accept the ways in which some groups — perhaps your own — have benefited from this societal favoritism. And then you have to open your mouth and be an active member of your community to vote out elected officials who are part of the problem."

"Just by the very fact that my mother divorced my father — it was so taboo to have a divorce in India and you were ostracized — I saw her break barriers within her own life."

"I would love to write more children’s books. I think children can understand complex things so long as you explain them in words they can wrap themselves around."

"And the truth is, models are freaks of nature. We are not normal people, and we're just born this way because of a genetic cocktail that our parents gave to us. You know, most of us have a really high metabolism."

"Rejection is a part of my job. It has been a part of my career as a food person and a filmmaker. It was certainly part of my job as an actor, and even more part of a job as a model. So, it is something that I have to accept. It’s not for the faint of heart."

"The world is getting bigger and smaller at the same time. The possibilities and opportunities to taste different kinds of foods are much more prevalent today than even 10 or 15 years ago. At the same time, because people are traveling, in spite of certain parts of the world that are dangerous, you do get to try more things. With the Internet and Instagram, you get to know about all these funky dishes."

"You know how you’re completely different with your mom than you are with your best friend, than you are with your romantic partner, than you are with your boss? They’re just different facets of me."

"Growing older gracefully means having a keen curiosity about learning things about the world that you didn’t know yesterday, no matter how many yesterdays you've had."

"I wanted to do a show to give people whom I have grown up with, whether they were Filipino, Mexican or whatever, the platform to speak for themselves."

"The professional food world is dominated by men. But most of the actual cooking of food in the world is done by women. And we women have always had to make do with whatever we can. We’re a little bit like water—we find our way because we’ve had to."

"I tried to have a child. Along the way, my body broke. My relationship did, too. In the process—because of it?"

"Three pieces of candy if I could kiss her on the lips for five seconds."

"Whatever she wanted to watch on TV if she would just "relax on me.""

"Basically, anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl I was trying."

"Her stickly, muscly little body thrashes beside me every night .. even as I slipped my hand into my underwear .. I always pretended to hate it."

"Grace was sitting up, babbling and smiling, and I leaned down between her legs and carefully spread open her vagina. She didn't resist"

"Instead of traveling, I tend to think about a variety of things while filming or working abroad. When I play a different role, my perspectives and ideas change each time."

"Like most female actresses, I am always aspiring to succeed and become a popular star, and my positive energy never dies out. And it wasn’t until entering my twenties that I began to identify my real dream as an actress. I realized that acting is not all about receiving people’s applause or cheer. It is about delivering the right character to the audience and feeling satisfied in who you become on stage. Therefore, I try to focus more on the abstract qualities of acting, and I hope to become a better actress throughout time."

"As an actress, it’s not only about looking good on camera, but being able to deliver the right emotions for the characters you play. This makes you more attractive on the screen. That’s why I focus more on acting rather than my appearance. Sometimes, I don’t even bother taking out the mirror to fix my makeup before filming."

"I think there are various sides to my personality. However, to simply summarize into one, I am a flexible person. I’m not bound by rules. I enjoy talking to people while standing, and even comfortably sitting down on the ground. I seek comfort wherever and whenever. I have a pretty lenient personality, but sometimes can be aggressive as well. But this is only seen when I am acting on stage."

"But at its core, Mulan is really about the character, the spirit. She is such a famous character, but I also wanted to be myself. It was all about balance and choice. It’s always brave to be yourself."

"I would say focus is really the number one. Each day I allowed myself to forget who I am for the moment. You have to kind of lose yourself and not think about just how brave Mulan is. Yes, I am playing a hero, so we need to bring out that side, but I think every human being is complex, and complex is so beautiful. And that’s where the energy of the character is."

"I think it’s important in every culture that we treat family respectfully. We’re being thankful and we’re showing love. I think if you ask me what family means, I would say it is unconditional love. So at this point in time, I think it’s still another universal language."

"I’m very lucky but I don’t want to put on too much pressure, because pressure means doubt. For me, the spirit of Mulan is the simpleness and the unspeakable belief and strength. This power inspires me."

"First when there's nothing But a slow glowing dream That your fear seems to hide Deep inside your mindAll alone I have cried Silent tears full of pride In a world made of steel Made of stoneWell, I hear the music Close my eyes, feel the rhythm Wrap around Take a hold of my heartWhat a feeling Bein's believin' I can have it all Now I'm dancing for my lifeTake your passion And make it happen Pictures come alive You can dance right through your life"

"I always felt pressure as a child to perform, but again that came from the people who were managing my career. There was no such thing as halfway, I had to do it to the hilt."

"I’ve had trouble sleeping for a good part of my life, And what I would always do is start at the very beginning of ‘The Miracle Worker’ and say all of the lines, all the way through."

"You know sometimes when you act, you work through some things as if you would in a therapy session."

"Whatever this thing is that takes over you, that says that you are worthless, that really the only answer is to kill yourself, is so much more powerful that that's... the calling you relate to."

"That’s not the way it’s supposed to be. But then, things often don’t turn out the way you plan."

"All that hitting out and pulling and tugging every performance for two years was probably a kind of therapy for me, a release. Otherwise, who knows what would have happened to me if I adjust had to hold it all in."

"I wrote the book not to have a catharsis, because I was under the impression that I already have had many catharses as one could have."

"There was so much suffering, She really, really suffered in a way that — we were desperate to help relieve her suffering, and so it's just a blessing that she's not suffering anymore."

"I think maybe the most important part of her legacy is her acting. Above and beyond anything, the reason any of the other stuff is possible in terms of the scope of the impact that she was able to have with people was her talent and her work and her work ethic, her discipline. She worked extremely hard."

"She’s much more together and mature. She’s raised two kids and five stepchildren, and she’s a grandmother. I can’t get over that."

"You know I think all of us in life are constantly — at different points in our lives — confronted with situations where we have to make choices which define us. And you know that you have to remain a morally upstanding person."

"It’s been one of the greatest acting challenges of my life,"

"There's that aesthetic of letting go of the self and trying to submit yourself for the art. People take advantage of that. People have always taken advantage of that."

"Each one of us grappled with that choice to speak or not to speak because it seemed like there was a very high potential for backlash and blacklisting."

"He is the most loving father, the most brilliant actor, the most beautiful operatic tenor, the most talented visual artist- the wisest and most human advice giver."

"“I told everyone I knew. No one said, Hey, this is sexual harassment. You should go to the authorities. You have a case. You should go to the police."

"Everyone is delighted to be doing what they’re doing and they’re doing it at a very high level. When people have great talent and great vision, and they are good and kind a generous and empowering, it’s infectious."

"I actually thought it would end my career for good and I’d never work again. There haven’t really been whistle-blowers before that who continued to work. If you look at people who brought these accusations forward, they were not believed and they were shunned."

"Yes. People are returning to things that really matter. Honesty. Kindness. Altruism. Living a true and honest life that doesn’t have anything to do with the outside of things, but the interior, the inner world. It’s not about materialism, but heart."

"My favorite kind of character is funny, strange, and vulnerable all kind of mixed together, so this is sort of my sweet spot."

"I’ve always had faith in the goodwill of others, I feel like a really lucky person to be able to have a second act based on merit and perseverance more than anything else."

"I want to affect change. I like to advocate. I like to influence legislative change, and I have helped pass more than 10 laws."

"I am not scared to death facing it. It will certainly give me a card to play with at the poker game of Hollywood. That can't hurt at all."

"It may have to do with my ego, wanting to be famous, wanting to be adored, wanting to be loved. ... Maybe I associated some sort of romance with the theater."

"You have to keep pressing through despair."

"All the great roles are tough-cookie roles, They’re the women you meet and can’t forget. They’ve got stuff! They’re generally women who have met and not allowed themselves to be overcome by challenges."

"When you’re suddenly in the limelight, you can make a few mistakes. Success has a way of distorting people: distorting your expectations, distorting your personality, distorting your sense of your own value. It takes a very strong sense of character to not let that happen or to notice that it’s happening."

"I’m not sure I started out as a great mother. I think I learned how to be a good mother."

"Obviously it’s very different because this is the great cathedral of nature, but it’s calming to my spirit and restful and refocuses you on what is beautiful and important."

"And if you can stay open through a long run and not get too rigidly identified with how you're doing certain lines, the process of discovering goes on through the length of the performance of the piece."

"I don’t like to go over territory that I’ve explored before. And I’d never played a peasant woman."

"I do occasionally read for things, and I have to say that I feel like every other young actor who is nervous before an audition. Even now, I still hate auditioning. I never liked auditioning."

"It’s hard to get a job after that, People think you want more money."

"It’s from people seeing you even in classes and talking about you that eventually your name and what you do gets known, if you care passionately enough about the art of acting."

"She's very open, very diligent and very gifted, she cared about the work of others, not just her own. It is not the usual ugly greed you find in some actresses today."

"She told my son the story of 'Big' in a wonderful way, Then she told my husband and me that she was going to give it one more year and then quit. 'Big' saved her from that."

"Television can be a very frustrating job for almost anybody working in television, because you’re shooting episodically, and you don’t know one scene from the next, and maybe they change around."

"I might have an empathy for the great art of mothering, that understands we can be imperfect and yet be doing our best as a mother. And I'm not afraid to show that, I guess."

"Well, I don't think of myself as a feminist at all. As soon as we start labeling and categorizing ourselves and others, that's going to shut down the world."

"I just want a straight-up truth,.I don’t need a lot of compliments on what’s working, I probably know that it’s working."

"If you can’t separate yourself and learn from what either worked or didn’t work you probably shouldn’t be acting in the first place, It’s a tool to learn."

"It’s a judgment about the character, and no, you can’t come into the character judging them as you’re playing them. That’s the film-maker’s job to choose the tone in which the character is seen."

"It’s a difficult thing for a woman to say, because I would really like more working women in all kinds of jobs, being a working woman myself."

"The nuns that I grew up around in New York City, they were those activist nuns. They were the nuns who were shot in El Salvador, you know? They were the women who had chosen their own path and put their lives on the line in the only way they were allowed."

"It doesn’t happen to me. I don’t even get asked out on dates. I’m a single woman and not by choice. It’s not the first interview I’ve mentioned it in. The dog might help."

"I was an extremely fortunate young woman as an actor. I got a job at The Public Theater and I also landed a job on a soap opera."

"Sex addiction can be an inability to really connect with people. It can show up in all kinds of places and it can be masked by drug and alcohol addictions. I feel very proud to be apart of Unlovable and open up this conversation."

"I think I made a huge mistake, the mistake was that I began to expect," said Leo. "The mistake I made was to expect all those big, important fellas to call me up."

"We are all born with a talent and the sweetest part of life comes to us when we allow ourselves to recognize what is that talent. Sometimes our mind, or friends, or parents tell us something, but it’s inside of us where this talent lies, only we can really know."

"I think being a female actor makes it more difficult in exactly the ways that any female on the planet finds the difficulty of our gender. There’s a huge misunderstanding about who we are and how we operate, a lot because of the way women are depicted in film and television."

"I understand the value of humor and I do believe laughter is a good medicine."

"I was a bird imitating the birds. And so it was their kind of imaginary world that I was raised in, and it was part delicious and part confusing."

"The 1950s and early '60s were emotionally rough for me. In 1950, when I was 23, I was named a Communist by Red Channels, an anti-Communist pamphlet, and was blacklisted by Hollywood from 1952 until the early 1960s."

"It was like, one day you were an actress who could do anything, and the very next day, you could not work in film or television again. And that was the temper of the times."

"I had 12 years to make up for. I'm a very practical person. I had to support myself, I had to support my daughter, and I had to work. And if the way that I could work was to have the years taken off my age at that time, I was desperate to do it. I had to be able to go from one job to another and be pretty. And I achieved that for a good long time. I made up those 12 years."

"I think the most important impetus in life, is that it not be boring. The fear of boredom drove me more than any yearning for something I wanted to achieve."

"I don’t use a typewriter or a computer, so everything was written by pen and ink by my little desk. It took me four years to complete it, and as you can see, it wasn’t an easy book to write."

"Learn how to be a waiter."

"The work she did in the film was very sensitive. There was something in her character that struck a chord with her. I found her fascinating."

"I knew my career as an actor would change. I wouldn’t get these parts again. I had reached the age where Hollywood begins to humiliate beautiful women. I wasn’t going to do it. Walking up there, I could almost feel myself accepting that change."

"For an actor, you sometimes have to say yes to these type of jobs. Especially when you get older, and are a woman."

"I’m in my 90s and it’s lovely to have any of my films appreciated."

"I don't know. Just walk. Just walk. My daughter Dinah just found out that a book she’s written, a novel, is being published. It’s very exiting. Maybe we’ll get to go to some great New York bookstore once everything’s back and see it up their on the shelves. That would be fun to walk to."

"I'd give my house to my dad, my car to the chauffeur, the bedroom suite to the maid who likes it so well, my Chinese room to my cook, and my dogs to the friends to whom they are most attached. I'd ask the few real intimates I have what they wanted most in this world, and I would do my best to see that they got them. And, if I still had time, I'd like to have a last dance."

"Wealth, beauty, and fame are transient. When those are gone, little is left except the need still to be useful, even though the parts get fewer."

"The word "actress" has always seemed less a job description to me than a title."

"Jealousy is, I think, the worst of all faults because it makes a victim of both parties."

"As long as I was playing someone else, I was fine. When I had to be myself, my problems began."

"I learned that carrying on while you're broken is not the answer. I tried to work harder and harder, thinking that work would cure everything. All it did was make things worse."

"I traveled in a world that once was—Hollywood of the war and immediate postwar years. And I existed in a world that never is—the prison of the mind. If what I have learned from these experiences can be summed up in one sentence, it would be this: life is not a movie. But I do not make that point in a sad or regretful way. I can only wonder, if my life had been a movie, would a director have cast Gene Tierney to play the part? The bitter with the sweet makes for a better part."

"I’m done shrinking. I’m going to grow. I’m going to grow taller than you. I’m going to grow so tall you won’t be able to climb me."

"When you realize that every breath is a gift from God. When you realize how small you are, but how much he loved you. That he, Jesus, would die, the son of God .."

"The three things I said when I came out of school were I want to work consistently, I want to do good work and I want to be paid fairly, and that's happened"

"1.Don't settle for a life that is less than you deserve.2.Your dreams are worth pursuing, no matter how big they may seem."

"15 Aug 2022 — I am Queen of the most powerful nation in the world! And my entire family is gone! Have I not given everything?"

"Virtually every time someone watches that movie, they're watching me being raped."

"It is a crime that movie is still showing; there was a gun to my head the entire time."

"When in response to his suggestions I let him know I would not become involved in prostitution in any way and told him I intended to leave, [Traynor] beat me and the constant mental abuse began. I literally became a prisoner, I was not allowed out of his sight, not even to use the bathroom, where he watched me through a hole in the door. He slept on top of me at night, he listened to my telephone calls with a .45 automatic eight shot pointed at me. I suffered mental abuse each and every day thereafter. He undermined my ties with other people and forced me to marry him on advice from his lawyer.My initiation into prostitution was a gang rape by five men, arranged by Mr. Traynor. It was the turning point in my life. He threatened to shoot me with the pistol if I didn't go through with it. I had never experienced anal sex before and it ripped me apart. They treated me like an inflatable plastic doll, picking me up and moving me here and there. They spread my legs this way and that, shoving their things at me and into me, they were playing musical chairs with parts of my body. I have never been so frightened and disgraced and humiliated in my life. I felt like garbage. I engaged in sex acts in pornography against my will to avoid being killed ... The lives of my family were threatened."

"First of all, people listened to me. I could talk as much as I wanted, and they would listen. And two, it was healing. Not just for me, but for the subjects that I talk about. I was talking about going through a breakup, and there were so many women in the audience who came up to me and said, “I’m going through a breakup too,” or, “I just went through a breakup and listening to you onstage, it doesn’t feel that bad anymore.” So, there’s a healing component in stand-up that I fell in love with, just knowing that somebody is listening and walking away in a better space"

"It’s a name that goes to show all the women out there who do stand-up, you can be beautiful on stage. You can be as sexy as you want to be on stage. You can wear your heels and do your makeup and hair and you can still go out there and be a beast in comedy"

"There are consequences to your actions. It may not be today or tomorrow but be mindful of what you do because there are consequences. Also, no YOLO. That “you only live once”—don’t do that, because you could die tomorrow, but what if you don’t die tomorrow? The decisions you make today could affect your tomorrow and here on out. So that’s advice I give to my students or my own kids or even just friends of mine who have this mentality of, “But I could die tomorrow!” Well, there’s a big chance you won’t, so don’t do that today. I need to listen to that myself, because I’ve been doing some stuff that I’ve been forgetting have consequences. That’s my biggest mantra is be mindful of what you do because it will come back to you eventually."

"So, it’s one of those I didn’t win but I won situations. I’m grateful for every experience and everyone I had the opportunity to meet. And just moving forward, I’ve learned to not cater to one type of crowd"

"Some people feel like when they get divorced, life is over. It’s different, but it’s not over. We’ve got to get back into dating. We’ve got to get back into the world and reintroduce ourselves. We’ve got to work out"

"I want women to know—and not just women, men! Anyone going through something, because we divorce ourselves from different things in life. It’s not just necessarily a person; it could be a bad habit. It’s saying it’s okay to let go of things and still be able to move on after"

"Acting is like the blood of language."

"I think I scare men. I was given the impression that being 19 and single in the world means you'll be fending off the wolves, but I can't find a wolf to save my life."

"I'm interested in human contact. I think phones have created a certain social incapacity; it's made people socially deficient."

"I’m not interested in hiding from the fact that my parents are actors. I’m proud of them! It’s very ordinary to pursue a career that your parents do, but when it’s in the public eye it becomes a complicated thing."

"Blush is simultaneously a revealing thing. Like, when you blush, you're revealing something about yourself, something personal. And it's also a mask. It hides your face, your feelings."

"The great thing about Stranger Things is it has such a reach and so many people watch it in the middle of the country. Even a little gesture like having a gay character is a big deal."

"I remember when we were filming last year, someone was like, 'Are you guys ready for your lives to change?' And we were like, 'What are you talking about?' And it did happen, but there is no way to prepare for it."

"She's bolder than I am, and she's more of a risk taker, and that was something I thought would be a challenge. But I really enjoyed getting to tap into that part of her, and I learned from her in that way. I stole some of her boldness."

"I've seen shows on Broadway, and I've been through Times Square many, many, many times, not always willingly through the crowds. But every time I walk up to the theater and go in through the stage door, it's like this magical portal into this incredible world."

"A lot of times YA is associated with women and female audiences, and that's why sometimes it gets pushed aside. Everyone should just feel things and stop being afraid of it."