I'm trying to be truthful.

I don't think of myself as a comedian.

Everyone hopes to get a fall slot, but I'm just happy to get on the air.

I am on the phone with my sisters every day.

I only have one job, and that's being a storyteller.

I was so angry at God for taking my father from me that I marched up to my mother before the funeral and told her I was going to quit nursing school. I just wanted to stop living.

I keep saying I won't go back to television, but I do.

You gain a certain maturity from being a nurse in a cancer ward.

It's not that I don't take TV seriously. I take it very seriously. But I've got my priorities straight. Call it my extra gift. Without it, I would be devastated every day in Hollywood.

I have a great affinity for senior citizens.

I worked at a nursing home though high school... There's a lost appreciation for a generation that has so much to tell us when we're so full of self-help books and doctors on TV.

I would hope to have some of the same audience that Oprah has earned. And I would love to earn that, as well.

When the Pixar people call, you jump at the opportunity.

There were seven kids in our family. My mom had seven kids in 10 years. So you had to learn how to talk and think fast if you wanted to be heard.

I'm from an Irish Catholic family.

There's nothing funnier than religion. Try explaining it to a kid. I had it all wrong when I was a kid.

Not only do people stop me on the street to say, 'We're walking, we're walking', but I have actually been in restaurants where the hostess was saying it to customers.

When you're an actress, you are a part of the storytelling process. You have to do the same thing when you direct.

I'm a blue-collar Chicago girl raised on wonderful movies my mom took us to, ones that had a lot of heart.

My dad was a man of great wisdom in his short time here.

I was very down as a teenager, very upset because I had gotten hurt in a car accident. But my dad was a source of strength. He used to say, 'It's the character with strength that God gives the most challenges to.' I've thought about that so many times in my life when things didn't go right.

My only power is my ability to do something with passion and do it well. It's also something someone cannot take way from me, so it's very valuable.

I don't have the fear I won't be able to think of something else to write. It's what I do.

I don't have the fear of my looks changing.

If an executive producer has written a certain line, and an actress says it, and it's not very funny, you don't dare go to them and say, 'I don't like this,' because it will make your life miserable.

When you're the mom in a big family comedy, you have to get your personality when you can.

Over the years, if you look at the films of people like Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges, Frank Capra, their supporting characters, even if it's a doorman with two lines, always seem three-dimensional. To me, that's a sign of good storytelling.

I think you have to see the high highs and the low lows to get to the core of what makes us tick as people.

I loved when my folks would watch 'The Dean Martin Show.'

Because I've been so blessed with a background in nursing and spent so much time with patients at a really intimate, vulnerable time in their lives, the one lesson I've learned is that you never turn down a challenge where you can keep your creative integrity and your heart and soul and your sense of self.

To have children on the set, you realize that if a 10-year-old can do it, who are you kidding? It humbles you.

I love talking to people and finding out their opinion.

If you can maintain your standards and your integrity and you fail, it's OK. It's when you sell out and you fail that you feel pretty sick inside.

What kind of woman irons her husband's sheets? Even the clothes I wear, I just throw 'em in the dryer with some golf balls.

Barry Levinson saw me on a tape and put me in 'Rain Man' as the waitress who dropped the toothpicks. The scene was talked about a lot. Then, all of a sudden, I started to get more auditions.

I think what happens is that some writers, who are so great in television or whatever, once they become successful, they get out of the loop of real life. It's real hard to draw on something to write.

I really appreciate the everyday stuff as far as material.

I lived in an apartment near Wrigley Field.

As a rock star, I have two instincts, I want to have fun, and I want to change the world. I have a chance to do both.

To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.

The less you know, the more you believe.

Rock 'n' roll is ridiculous. It's absurd. In the past, U2 was trying to duck that. Now we're wrapping our arms around it and giving it a great big kiss.

Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it's to have any meaning in this world - and stop being its apologist.

Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.

U2 is an original species... there are colours and feelings and emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

My heroes are the ones who survived doing it wrong, who made mistakes, but recovered from them.

It's so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio.

It's stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition.