Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Celebrity status for me came slowly. I wasn't an overnight sensation. I had time to prepare emotionally.
If somebody wants to think of me as a movie star, that's fine, that's great. It sort of makes me giggle.
When I'm pushing myself, testing myself, that's when I'm happiest. That's when the rewards are greatest.
For a while, I just sang at a steakhouse. I would go from table to table and really just survived on tips.
I write about Texas, New York, California and Virginia, and they're all important places in my repertoire.
Nature is my church. The wind in the trees and the bugs and the frogs. All those things are comfort to me.
With my coloring, I'm nothing in black and white. I've seen my films sometimes on black-and-white TV. Disaster.
It's difficult to just let go of a character. Especially after you've been preparing and researching for weeks.
Hollywood is like a piranha. They don't give you breathing room. You don't have time to let your career breathe.
Some families can experience terrible tragedy and deal with it, and others not. I find those things fascinating.
I'm a fool for a good role in a creative piece where there are really such talented writers and wonderful actors.
I think that we all fantasize about that teeny tiny time in the film industry when women ruled, back in the '40s.
It's really about the work - if you are doing it for the right reasons - really to illuminate the human condition.
My cousin, Rip Torn, persuaded me not to change my name. You shouldn't change what you are in the search for success.
I think that no human gets away unscathed in this old life. We've all experienced loss and grief and pain and tragedy.
For me, I never really wanted to be in a 'Sissy Spacek' vehicle. That was not my intention. I got to be the 'Everygirl.'
I feel like if I don't get a film and somebody else does, then that film never belonged to me. The ones I get belong to me.
I'm drawn to ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, which is a big part of the human condition.
If you live only a movie-star life, you know only movie-star things. I needed to live a regular life with normal people around.
I'm not Meryl Streep. My God - she's the greatest actor that ever lived. It's sad that ordinary actors like me are compared to her.
What's normal? I think I'm normal... Maybe I'm abnormal because I get such a thrill from real life, just real life, everyday things.
But you finally think, there is what there is, and you have to work within those confines and just keep chipping away at your own work.
There are classic horror films that, if you are a human being in this world, you have to have seen. They've become a part of our culture.
I've done some of my best work in films that fell right through the cracks, so I try to not make career moves but to build a body of work.
Living in New York always felt to me like living in the middle of a carnival. It never stopped. There was something very exciting about it.
When I lived in New York City, I loved it so much. But every six months, I had to go home to Texas to remember who I was. Get filled back up.
There's kind of a time you get warned about where the rug gets pulled out from under you: beyond ingenue, before you get into character stuff.
Film is an amazing art form, but so is life. When your career and your life can work together, and one can support the other, it's just great.
My parents were devoted. Civic minded. We had family counsels. Three of us children against two of them. We lived a 'Leave It to Beaver' time.
You relate to a character and you find that character within yourself. It's all parts of me. I don't leave characters behind. I just let them go.
That was the magical thing about the Seventies: artists ruled. Because films were relatively low-budget, nobody cared. We could just go off and work.
Just about every town in Texas has a beauty pageant. Ours was called The Dogwood Fiesta. I was in one of those. I played the guitar and sang - and lost.
I love a lot of the '70s musicians, like Bonnie Raitt. And I love Sheryl Crow. But probably my favorite musician is a woman by the name of Schuyler Fisk.
I'm not paralyzed with fear, but I realize it is important to live as if there's no tomorrow, always trying to maintain your integrity and have no regrets.
Oftentimes you read scripts, and you get to one and you think, 'OK, is this good, or is this just better than all the other ones that I have been reading?'
Hollywood is a film industry, a film business. I don't approach my career in that way. I see it as 'art,' and I become involved in films that ring my bell.
I connect with just plain old everyday people. Human behavior fascinates me, the people who are the nuts and bolts of this country who help hold up the world.
Texas is just so rich with characters. Women who live alone in a little house on a thousand acres with nothing but cattle and a pickup truck. And an airplane.
I got an automatic breadmaker. It's the greatest! I get more points for that. You computerize in the results you want, and it's no fail. I'm a modern homemaker.
Everybody who loves me calls me Sissy, so I guess that's just who I am. When I'm 80, they'll still be calling me Sissy. Oh, well, I guess there are worse things.
I studied homeopathy for years and years. Herbs and all kinds of acupuncture, acupressure, alternative medicine. I think it's just better to treat the whole person.
I lived an idyllic 'Huckleberry Finn' life in a tiny town. Climbing trees. Tagging after brothers. Happy. Barefoot on my pony. It was 'To Kill a Mockingbird'-esque.
I wanted to put all my family stories down for my girls, and I remember everything so vividly. I just wanted to put everything down while I still can remember it all.
I had no fear 'cause it seemed everyone in the audience always applauded whatever I did. Course, maybe it was because I always seemed to know everyone in the audience.
Most things in my life I had before leaving home. Values, support, great family. I was shaped at an early age. A musician playing guitar, I wanted to be a folk singer.
You want to live your life and live it just as fully and as deeply as you can. That's your deep well of reserve. That's where you get all your - the fodder for your work.
My children came along at a perfect time in my life. My career was soaring, and they didn't care who I thought I was. They just wanted to eat. It brought me down to earth.
I was always proud about being from Texas and, you know, maybe that was part of fearlessness. I love the fact that Texas is so big, but you don't feel small because of that.
When I first met David Lynch, he was living in the stables of the American Film Institute... He'd work all night and have his crew lock him in during the day, and he'd sleep.
There is a long tradition of pungent living in the South. It was wonderful to have that imprinted on me so early in life. I already had my core when I left my little town in Texas.