I always think that the difference between film and theater is like the difference between masturbation and making love. Because, in film, you just have to get one moment right; you're practically by yourself. And in theater, you actually have to have a relationship with the audience.

Now, as I move through my fifties, I can be professional and domestic, creative and intellectual, patient and urgent. I have learned that we should never settle for someone else's definition of who we can be. Growing to this age, I realize, is kind of like feeling your voice deepen. It's still your voice, but it has more substance, and it sounds like it knows its own origins.

This Catholic thing, I think what it does is it makes a place for mystery in a person. And even when the faith goes away, there's that space where you crave something bigger than yourself. For me, that's kind of where art came in, after that.

At the end of your life, you are going to want to know that you made some kind of difference.

At a time when everything seems so out of control and the people you've elected are bogus and there's so much random violence and hatred, it fills you with such hope and admiration to even be part for a short time in a community where people have connected to strangers to try to put out a hand.

The trouble with being an activist is you end up like Eve and you get kicked out of the Garden of Eden. You know, Eve was the first person who thought for herself. And she still gets a bad rap. I named my daughter after her.

When I got the script for Thelma & Louise, when I met with the director, Ridley Scott, I said, "I don't want to do a revenge film. I'm not interested in doing that moment in the script after they shoot the truck, where it says they jump up and down and they're real happy about it".