• "In grade school I was a complete geek. You know, there's always the kid who's too short, the one who wears glasses, the kid who's not athletic. Well, I was all three."
 
 • "You never have sex the way people do in the movies. You don't do it on the floor, you don't do it standing up, you don't always have all your clothes off, you don't happen to have on all the sexy lingerie. You know, if anybody ever ripped my clothes, I'd kill them."
 
 • "I wish I could say I broke this kicking down the door at Paramount, but I was running after my son." - said at the GLAAD Media Awards in reference to her broken toe and to the producers at Paramount who are allowing Laura Schlessinger to have a TV show. Schlessinger angered the gay community with her views on homosexuality".
 
 • "I was a goody-goody. I was one of those kids who played by the rules. I used to have to take people to the principal's office. Isn't that awful?" - about how she was as a child".
 
 • "Only five people got nominated in that category, and that's not very many people. So I did all right." - about losing the 2000 Best Actress Oscar.
 
 • "I'm looking for the truth. The audience doesn't come to see you, they come to see themselves".
 
 • "Now that the FDA has legalized RU-486, it makes us feel that politically the winds are blowing our way. But, if someone has a problem with reproductive freedom, I won't even consider voting for them. George W. Bush is anti-choice, and I really believe that should he be elected, we will end up in a really difficult situation" - her views on abortion and reproductive rights, October 2000.
 
 • "It is the most wonderful experience of your life. It deepens absolutely everything.You have a greater understanding of things,so in a way it is a gift.For me it has made everthing much better.I'm so happy; I am extremely fortunate." (about her son Caleb and becoming a mother)
 
 • "I hesitate to call things companion pieces or to draw comparison between films because I think you reduce the films by doing that."
 
 • "It's true, the classic, iconic American ideal, that heroine, our idea of perfection is this blonde woman in a blue dress and a blue car."
 
 • "That's the beauty of what actors do, that you only have yourself as a resource. And so the trick is to find something in them that you connect to somewhere. And with every single one of my characters, I have to find something that I really understand and ultimately believe."
 
 • "My parents were very liberal. That's a misconception about the military. I'm a proud Army brat. I love the military. It breaks my heart what this war has done to it. These backdoor, draftlike returns of soldiers to the front - you don't do that. You don't send a soldier back three or four times. That's not OK."
 
 • "When someone says, 'I'm not political,' I feel like what they're saying is 'I only care about myself. In my bathtub. Me and my bathtub is what I care about.'"
 
 • "There's always a female audience. But we will only go if they make movies for us because we're just too busy. It makes me crazy when people ask why women don't go to the movies. Number one, there are no movies for us and, number two, we have jobs and families. I never get out of the house with two little kids. If I go, I want to know it really is something for me. I want it to be relevant to me".
 
 • "The great disappointment is that when you're acting, you've literally become a different person in your head, and when you see it you go, Oh! It's the same face! You feel sometimes so limited by your physiognomy. You are desperately trying to look different, but it doesn't always work. There are some things that you can change, but unfortunately you're always left with the same face".