When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.

I got married to Chris Sarandon, who was a graduate student, and he knew everything at that point, I thought, because he was older. He introduced me to poetry and black-and-white movies.

I'm kind of a nerd, so whenever I get a chance to talk to an artist I really admire, I tend to gravitate to process.

In the U.S., they just want to know who you're sleeping with.

We have more families at risk with the death penalty. It targets the voiceless, the poor, people of color. And so it's important just to understand what your government is doing and how much they are spending.

You have to take away the idea that something you do is right or wrong. I don't think there's a right or a wrong; I think there's an "it works" or "it doesn't work" for the whole. And that's why you need a director you trust, so you can just keep throwing out suggestions.

We were friends with Jonathan Demme. We were all down on the West Side of New York, and I think I met Kurt Vonnegut through Edith Demme. And then I was lucky to do Who Am I This Time? 1982, which was an adaptation of his short story that Jonathan Demme directed with Chris Walken and I, and that really cemented the friendship.