It's so much easier to be happy. It's so much easier to choose to love the things that you have, instead of always yearning for what you're missing, or what it is that you're imagining you're missing. It is so much more peaceful.

It's amazing what you can get if you quietly, clearly and authoritatively demand it.

Chris Cooper is one of my favorite actors in the world. I've seen him in most everything he's done.

But for me, it [singing] was a way to get out the feeling of the song, and also to get out the feelings that, you know, roil in high school, to express something that I had no other way of expressing.

Acting is not about being someone different. It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different, then finding myself in there.

I'm thrilled when I get nominated. I don't count how many and I don't remember how many I've had. I just know it's a lot.

Women are the last group anyone cares about in Hollywood.