Laura Linney Quotes

I love actors, regardless of where they are in their skill level. There's something terribly satisfying about working with someone who's really learning.

I still know I have an awful lot to learn, and I hope I'm put in whatever situation it is that's gonna help me learn it, or that I'll get to watch really good people do what they do.

I'm very hard on my bags because I tend to carry a lot of stuff with me.

I always laugh to myself when I listen to some really big A-list star saying that they are just a normal person.

I believe that no matter what you do in life, if you learn the basics through theater, it will help you in everything else - problem solving, communication, discipline, all of that stuff.

Fear, anxiety and neurosis: that's just in the suitcase when you're an actor.

My parents were divorced and I would spend weekends with my father.

History's a resource.

Collaboration. ... For me, it has informed every move I've ever made. And it saved me in many ways and still does. When things get hard, you can cling to the work.

I love working closely with people.

You know when someone's over-flattering you in a way. You smile but you can't believe it.

I find that things don't bother me as much. If I had a bad day on set, it sort of just rolls of my back in a way that it didn't before. So that's where the biggest difference is, stuff that used to get under my skin or that I would worry about or be anxious about just isn't a problem. So in some ways, having a child has been very liberating. I found it very liberating.

To be too knowing is a downfall.

What I find so interesting about people is the choices they make, and how that effects their behavior, their sense of self and their relationships.

I tend to make low-budget movies but, yeah, I make more money than I ever thought I would make.

Courtroom dramas can be boring.

I've always thought that I'm sexy in my own right, but not in a way that people thought was bankable.

I crave a cone of silence every once in while.

I never felt like a happy-go-lucky ingenue to begin with. And parts are written better when you're older. When you're young, you're written to be an ingenue, and you're written to be a quality. You're actually not written to be a person, you're written for your youth to inspire someone else, usually a man. So I find it just much more liberating.

There's a real passing down in the theater, almost ad nauseam. You have to listen to older people talk about their experience, but it makes you very aware of what has come before you or what is coming after you - that you're a part of a link in a chain. It's not all about you.

The thing about death is that it's honest. I go to things that have a core of honesty about them and there's nothing more honest than death.

I don't want to spend my life in my 40s feeling bad about being in my 40s, and then all of a sudden I'm 50, and I will have missed a whole decade!

I think everybody handles things very differently and you can conjecture, but until you're put in that situation, you really don't know.

I am very aware that playwrights, particularly good ones, have a intention for everything they write. Language and punctuation is used specifically, and most of the time actors can find wonderful clues about character in the rhythm and cadence of the language used.

People's view of cancer will change when they have their own relationship with cancer, which everyone will, at some point.

I don't mind aging. I mean, my whole thing is, it's just a privilege to age.

Cancer is so much bigger than a TV show.

Things get complicated at times, so there are certainly moments when you wish your life were different. That's true for everybody, not just people in our profession. But there's nothing I feel like I gave up professionally. I'm absolutely doing what I enjoy.

I don't consider myself a celebrity, and I don't consider myself a star.

Doing the right thing has power.

It is always good to explore the stuff you don't agree with, to try and understand a different lifestyle or foreign worldview. I like to be challenged in that way, and always end up learning something I didn't know.

It was so soon after I'd had my son and I really wasn't planning on going back to work for a while. I will walk over hot coals to work with Bill Condon on anything, the experience that you have with him is just too good... I've certainly never worked with him before so the trio of Bill [Codon], Ian [McKellen], and Sherlock Holmes, and England: it was too much to say "no" to.

I could have gone to the gym for three hours a day and bought into all that, but I just wasn't interested.

I enjoy learning about different periods and people, and then taking what's universal about the human condition and seeing where it matches up. No matter where you are, certain things unite everybody.

What people can survive and what they don't survive is shocking to me. Someone can go to Iraq and be blown to bits and survive. Someone can trip and fall on the street and they die - that's that.

I am very lucky, because for the most part people are very nice to me, and I am still able to go about my life and ride the subway and all that.

I love to work in all sorts of different situations. I think you learn a lot, which is why I try not to approach something the same way, because it might not be appropriate, and then you can get lazy just out of boredom. So I love any approach.

That's my favorite food group: donut. I love the donut.