comedy ... is much harder to do than drama. It's not true that laugh and the world laughs with you. It's very hard to make a group of people laugh at the same thing; much easier to make them cry at the same thing. ... That's why great comic acting is probably the greatest acting there is.

Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that instant.

it is extraordinary how much you are theirs, and how little they are yours. The child grows inside you and there is something mystical and mythical in that, but then you actually see that you are nothing more than the box in which they come. There is this total person, already formed, themselves.

comedy ... is much harder to do than drama. It's not true that laugh and the world laughs with you. It's very hard to make a group of people laugh at the same thing; much easier to make them cry at the same thing. ... That's why great comic acting is probably the greatest acting there is.

The important thing in acting is to be able to laugh and cry. If I have to laugh, I think of my sex life. If I have to cry, I think of my sex life.

[On being asked, 'Did you ever say that an actress needs to be able to laugh and to cry and that when you need to laugh you think of your sex life and when you need to cry you think of your sex life?':] No.

You'd think is something one would grow out of. But you grow into it. The more you do, the more you realize how painfully easy it is to be lousy and how very difficult to be good.