Some people are filled by compassion and a desire to do good, and some simply don't think anything's going to make a difference.

We need art as much as we need good works. You need it like food. You need it for inspiration to keep going on the days that your low. We need each other in that way.

I've thought a lot about the power of empathy. In my work, it's the current that connects me and my actual pulse to a fictional character in a made up story, it allows me to feel, pretend feelings and sorrows and imagined pain.

I am not always happy. I am happy in front of the press. I can be extremely grumpy, ask my husband.

And she [Margaret Thatcher] also had a sort of a way, like a railroad train, of going, taking a breath and starting quite quietly and making a point in a way that you don't really know that this point is going to be made through several examples, and there will be not be a break in the speaking voice at any point.

If you make the tough decisions, people will hate you today. But they will thank you for generations.

I would like Martin Scorsese to be interested in a female character once in a while, but I don’t know if I’ll live that long.