I have always been confident in my skills and once the game got going I knew I was probably the best player on the floor most of the time whether it was junior high, high school or college. I knew I had control of the game.

While day by day the overzealous student stores up facts for future use, he who has learned to trust nature finds need for ever fewer external directions. He will discard formula after formula, until he reaches the conclusion: Let nature take its course.

Leadership is getting players to believe in you. If you tell a teammate you're ready to play as tough as you're able to, you'd better go out there and do it. Players will see right through a phony. And they can tell when you're not giving it all you've got.

Anytime you've got an opportunity to play for your country and win a gold medal, I think that takes it all. That's the greatest thing you could ever achieve in your sport. So, I have been very fortunate to play on great teams, but the gold medal was probably the best.

Practice habits were crucial to my development in basketball. I didn't play against the toughest competition in high school, but one reason I was able to do well in college was that I mastered the fundamentals. You've got to have them down before you can even think about playing.

You know when I played, you had me and Kevin (McHale) and some others throughout the league. I think it's good for a fan base because as we all know the majority of the fans are white America. And if you just had a couple of white guys in there, you might get them a little excited.

I was always making decisions and they were easier decisions because I had control of the game, I had control of the ball. As a coach you sort of put the ball in other player's hands and let them make decisions for you. But I still get a kick out of winning basketball games and that's what I'm in this for.

Before every game I used to go out and shot the same shots over and over and over. In the summer time I spent a lot of time just shooting. So really it just came natural. Whether it's a tie game or down by 1 or up by five, it was always the same shot. So I always felt comfortable with the ball in my hands because it was in there a million times before.

I went to a Catholic school. The private school was good - the teachers wanted all of us to have the freedom to think for ourselves. The education was good at the Catholic school, but you only got that one ideology.

Luckily, I was raised by people whod already seen all the yuck stuff, which is why they originally didnt want me to act. I understood the difference between getting a part at a Hollywood party and getting a job.

I don't care, but I don't get bitter about anything as long as I can work and do the things I love. And it would be a beautiful world if those things I love and that mean something could remain as they are.

I knew you had to go in and audition and maybe they'd hire you, and that's where you start. I had a good understanding about press: that it's the actor's responsibility to publicize his or her films.

It's very easy to get caught up in - there's a hype going on now that I haven't seen in years, and it's actually more about press than it is about an actor's work or what films they've been in.

I like movies about longing and desperation, and dark and light things, stories about people struggling to raise children, and to have relationships and be intimate with each other.

Whether a movie part comes to me or I seek it out, there's always this journey to darkness through light, or vice versa; that element has been in almost everything I've done.

It sounds like a cliché, but mother is really one of my closest friends, and so's my dad. He and I weren't very close when I was younger, but now we're best friends.

What about good small roles for women? I've told my agent, if there are two great scenes in a film, I don't care, if it's something with that great edge to it.

When you're playing someone who has a strong ego about themselves, you can't play them when you have the opposite opinion of the one they have of themselves.

I hope we can be consummate artists as women or revolutionaries, or whatever women want to be, and also have love, not only for ourselves but from a partner.

Whatever character you play, it gives you the chance to expose another side of yourself that maybe you've never felt comfortable with, or never knew about

I really don't consider myself to be a conventional Hollywood star. I've never really been marketed by the big studios to do mass market box office films.

I'm interested in human nature. That's why I chose to become an actor. Whatever people are struggling with, the struggle is often where the drama is.

I love to rescue animals.... The pounds were so crowded they were putting animals down almost immediately. Seven thousand dogs were put to sleep.

As someone who has been asked to ask David Lynch what his movies mean for 25 years, I'm very careful about asking artists what their art means.

I still have a lot to learn. I just have two cats, and when I'm in a bad mood - you know, it would be very easy to throw a cat across a room.

I left our home to work on a movie, and while I was away, my boyfriend [Billy Bob Thorton] got married, and I've never heard from him again.

I'm lucky enough that directors sometimes seek me out for little projects that people don't even know about, that just surface later on.

I made a commitment to myself: that I wanted to be an actress, and I wanted to do films that make a difference... It has to move people.

Wild at Heart made a few people angry-they thought I was exploiting women by showing that when a woman says no she really means yes.

You don't have to run away from life your whole life. You can really live. You can change. And you can be an agent of change.

What do you say when someone has truly inspired you? How do you express to an artist how deeply their work has affected you?

Unfortunately, overall, movies are a conglomerate. People buy and sell people in this business, which can get really ugly.

It's really fun to act like a bimbo. But it's fun to act like a bimbo only when people know that you really aren't one.

My mother opened a bank account for me when I made $60 on my first day of work as an extra. She's that kind of mother.

I don't turn my nose up at anything. If it's a great part, it's a great part. I'd love to do a box-office hit.

We like our archetypes and heroes to be what they are at face value. And life doesn't work out like that

I feel that movies are gifts that come to you, and there are no accidents in what you end up doing.

I wanted to go to Jupiter. That was my plan from day one, and David Lynch gave me the ticket.

There's always a side of a woman that likes a man from the other side of the tracks

You can hardly tell where the computer models finish and the real dinosaurs begin

The really courageous and bold thing is to make movies about human behaviour

It would be great to make a movie that had the style of a great '30's film.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is one of the greatest films of all time.

That's life - to turn each other on, to feel good, to feel in love.

There's something so accessible about heroes who have faults.

When man decides he can control nature, he's in deep trouble

I'm interested in flawed protagonists. I was raised on them.

It's always been a desire of mine to work with my parents

If my career were a hairstyle, it would be helmet-head.

You can change. And you can be an agent of change.