Romance is important, but to have a friend you can use as a mirror, who can give you an objective response, that's what's really important.

It's one of the most beautiful scripts [Brokeback Mountain] I've ever read, and it was Ang Lee, and at the time Heath [Ledger] was a friend of mine - before we even shot the movie - and always sort of alluring to me.

There are a lot of different things that are spinning and connecting when your family sees what you do.

One of the things that I'm so proud of [about] that movie [Brokeback Mountain], was to see, within the past basically 10 years, how much has changed. When the Supreme Court [issued a ruling] just a little while ago, I felt like we had been part, a little part and parcel of that movement.

Heath [Ledger] was always somebody who I admired.He was way beyond his years as a human, in a way.

Most of the things that I learn are from the women in my life.

I think, now, younger generations do take that for granted in a lot of ways. I don't think that takes away from the struggle of identity and what that is. But the struggle for identity is everybody's struggle. No matter what it is.