Mariska Hargitay Quotes

They say that the average lifespan of an SVU detective is 4 years. People can't do it longer than that because it's so difficult.

I say to everybody, 'Adoption is not for the faint of heart.'

Life begins at 40, and I'm living proof.

My Dad taught me that good health is all about living in gratitude.

I'm a size 8, and I feel proud of that, because it's healthy. I've never felt compelled to be a skinny actress.

I think because I became a mom later in life, everything in life means more.

I am proud to be a role model for my viewers. I am finding out that helping victims is as or more rewarding the all the awards I win.

Just having someone make you laugh so hard that it hurts is so healing to me.

You know how you wake up in the morning and sometimes you look gorgeous and other times you look like you got hit by a mack truck? I realized that my mack truck is food. If I have no sugar, yeast or wine, I have no undereye bags and my skin is perfect.

I think people were expecting me to be that kind of glamorous sexpot. So they were always, Wow you're not what I expected.

Having a child changes everything. All of a sudden you have so much to lose, so much to live for.

Surviving and thriving in the wake of my mothers loss, I learned to believe in God. He has a plan, if you pay attention to the signs. I am inspired by the absolute proof of miracles.

If you stop for one second and do something, everyone is happy. You pay it forward and it comes back to you twelve-fold.

My weekends are extremely precious.

I've always heard that you'll know, but I never understood it. With Peter, we even broke up after we dated for a year, for two or three months, but I still knew. I knew there was something different about this union. Even through the hard times, it was like "How are we going to get through this?

I wasn't at all trying to be skinny, My Mom is Jayne Mansfield, I'm allowed to have curves.

Every day is deeper and richer and more soulful.

There's so much that you can get mad about. Out of self-preservation, I focus on being grateful.

I think God runs the show. Completely. Life proves it every day: He runs the show.

I'm just grateful that my body is healthy. I want to be on this planet for a long time, so I try to eat things that make me feel good and make me strong. But I also love food and I love life: Some days having that extra bowl of pasta and a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup means more to me than being thin.

Chocolate is the first luxury. It has so many things wrapped up in it: Deliciusness in the moment, childhood memories, and that grin-inducing feeling of getting a reward for being good.

I'm living every ten-year-old boy's fantasy. The other day, Chris and I had this big scene where we had to pull out our guns, and I was thinking, 'Here we are in New York City - a place where every actor wants to be - and we are literally playing cops and robbers. How great is that?'

You've got to kick fear to the side, because the payoff is huge.

It wasn't really that hard to act when you see somebody holding a gun to your partner. It's also believing the circumstances and I believed it.

No one can take away your pain, so don't let anyone take away your happiness.

I have a more developed sense of my priorities. Life has so much more meaning now.

I want to be a fun mom. Not a gasping for air mom.

In life you have two choices. You can laugh or you can cry. You have to laugh, you have to.

The experience of being cared for is profound, and it nourishes the soul as much as the food does the body.

I realize that you have to show up for your life.

~Before you have kids, when you're on a plane and there's a screaming kid, all you can think is, Give me earplugs! As soon as I became a mom, though, I got it. You find yourself asking, 'What can I do? You want me to hold him?' Because you think about the time your kids was screaming, and there was the one parent who looked at you and smiled. And that compassion was everything.~

I get very excited about my double stroller. Every time I look at it, I get a shot of adrenaline and joy because I think, This is real!

A guy at ABC told me to change my name and get a nose job. I said 'You get a nose job.'

When my body is strong, I feel stronger inside. I feel more capable of handling emotional situations. Usually I'm more of a inside-out person, but this was a great case of me from the outside in.

I definitely have my days where I look like I got dressed in the dark.

I'm a water person; water heals.

I have so much love that I didn't even know about.

When I read the script sometimes, it's like 'Christ! Enough!' I can't sleep at night sometimes. There's the occasional script that just hammers you, that you can't shower off.

Over half a million women are raped in this country every year, and only a fraction of them report it because they're too ashamed. It’s a really screwed up world, but its not your fault, and what happened to you, it doesn't make you the monster.

You survived the abuse, you’re going to survive the recovery.

But trust can take you a long way. And my faith takes me a long way. And I think that our pains, our vulnerabilities, and our insecurities can fuel us to be better. To try harder. To dig deeper.