Love is saying you're sorry. It's the opposite of those cherub posters that say, 'Love is never having to say you're sorry.' Wrong! Love is three sorrys a day. If you haven't met that quota, something's wrong.

Anyone who's had a finger pointed at them and been told they're pretty or attractive, there's a power that comes with that. But beauty for a woman becomes cumbersome because it's always being equated with youth.

You have to realize, making movies is the weirdest thing you could ever do. It's a contrivance, but you're attempting to reach people's hearts in the dark, and there are so many factors that are out of your control.

Secretariat was just ridiculously endowed with every positive quality that a person would seek out in a non-human. He was very aware of his environment; he surveyed the terrain before he ran and would look people in the eye.

You see the movie with the music and the editing and all the parts that you weren't there for when it was being filmed, and you really appreciate all the names that are scrolling by. You realize that you accomplished so much.

Some people fascinate me. They really worship at the altar of their careers, you know? And it's terrifying. It's sort of like setting a table and waiting for someone to come along and whoosh - push all the plates onto the floor.

Essentially, my hero-role model is Muhammad Ali, because when I watched this one fight of his with my dad when I was a kid, and I watched him not go down... I think him just taking a lot of blows and not going down, it was so moving.

I remember 'vulnerability' being an unattractive word for most of my life, and I resented it as a direction coming from a director just because it implied weakness so I get the job. But it is that humbling place that creates compassion.

I can tell you that, you know, when I went to my first movie premiere, it was my own movie, and I wore the best jeans I had and my favorite top. You know, I made sure my hair had some wave in it because I braided it the night before myself.

I've heard stories of people, even celebrities that have gone online, pretended to be someone they weren't, and conducted a 5-year friendship via e-mail. Then, they got married because they really love each other from all that communication.

We live our whole lives, and in our dying moment, we have to ask ourselves, 'What did we really care about? What impact did we make on the world?' The older I get, the more I realize the answers have to do with how we affect and love the people around us.

I don't know what it is, exactly, but there's a negative drag on film sets after the second week or so, a mutinous vibe because the infinite capacities of the directors and everybody else become quite finite and everybody's under the gun and it becomes work.

I think it's lovely that women are afforded attention on the stage in terms of their inner journeys, their emotional lives. That's the great harvest, the great writing available to women. Whether that makes it to the screen, that's a whole other conversation.

A grandparent will tell you, "Have fun!" and a parent will tell you, "Be safe, do a good job, make me proud." You know what I mean? I try to grandparent myself now, because it's important to have fun, it's important to impart the fun in things to other people.

It's so great to watch sports live. I think everyone should watch it up close once, if possible. I would like to see every sport live at least once to fully appreciate what's happening on the court or on the field or on the ice or whatever the playing surface may be.

Americans have an interesting conundrum, a black and white line: You're on one side or the other of Puritanism or licentiousness. But that gray area where people abide, between their ears or on the Internet, needs to be fleshed out more in terms of permission granted.

What women represent to the male is, historically, a big burden. It's a lovely dream, but it's the stuff of literature, art, and everything. Living up to what the male psyche projects onto the female is the stuff of books. You'd need a lot more than an interview to go into it!

I'm a painter, that's where I started out, at four years old, that was my first love as far as expression. So, I'm not a painter in the sense of, "Please come see my paintings" but, I do understand the value of not looking over the artist's shoulder while the work is in progress.

To be honest, relationships with the opposite sex are the most challenging things I've done. You lose your compass, gravity changes, you don't know what's up or down, you're trying to figure it out. You're trying to make everybody happy, including yourself, and it's just... it's humbled me.

I take comfort that aging happens to everybody. It's part of life. Aging offers great lessons in dignity, since the indignity wins in the end. Yes, it bothers me when I have lines or puffiness or droops. But it connects me with the human race. Like weather bringing people together, aging brings people together.

I think that directing is the ultimate martyred task of filmmaking, that it has nobility to it. It takes three years to make a film, for the most part. I think it requires the attentiveness of a mother hen. I don't know how people raise children and direct films. I'm sorry, I don't know, how can you be good at both?

As an actor, you hope to obtain this mind meld and sometimes I feel like I'm chasing a horse holding on to its tail and getting dragged, and other times I feel much more velcroed into the saddle. And I'm not the knower of which is better or best as a process, it's just as random as the weather in terms of what my subjective experience is.

I think a lot of the time, the studio system is so compelled to kowtow to its fear that women are not going to be found sympathetic. It just sort of euthanizes any hope of more diverse examples of the emotional realities of people. Representing my gender, I think, "Well, I have those emotions, why don't those ever get brought to the screen so I can feel recognized?"

I do feel that if it's not on the page, there's no hope of it getting to the stage. You really can't take a cat and turn it into a dog, or try and get lemons off an apple tree, or what have you. Sometimes there's this real naïveté that people possess, where they want you to infuse a scene with a certain quality, and it's like an apology. "I read the script, didn't you? What's the agenda here?"

Americans have an interesting conundrum, a black and white line: You're on one side or the other of Puritanism or licentiousness. But that gray area where people abide, between their ears or on the Internet, needs to be fleshed out more in terms of permission granted. I think a lot of women are contained within the parentheses of shoulds and role-play. It's all about entitlement and history. It's all about upper-body strength - and exacting your will.

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